


Angels

by dilaudiddreams



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Abduction, Angst with a Happy Ending, Autistic Spencer Reid, Bisexual Derek Morgan, Canon Divergence, Child Neglect, Drug Addiction, Father Figure Hotch, Gay Spencer Reid, Grief, Healing, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, Kidnapping, M/M, Medical Torture, Mental Illness, Protective Derek, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Rescue, Sexual Abuse, Spencer Whump, Torture, religious trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-08
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:47:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26352154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilaudiddreams/pseuds/dilaudiddreams
Summary: He runs his finger over the glass.“Poor little angel,” he mumbles. “What happened to you?”-----In a desperate search for recovery, Spencer Reid makes a few wrong turns and finds himself in something close to Hell on Earth.His team holds out hope that the mystical, godlike powers of psychological profiling might be enough to bring him home.
Relationships: Derek Morgan/Spencer Reid
Comments: 132
Kudos: 293





	1. Craving

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!! I'm back with more :) 
> 
> This is my favorite fic I've written so far, and I really hope that you'll enjoy it, too!
> 
> Warning in plenty of advance that this fic deals heavily with themes of addiction, abuse, and death, in case anyone didn't see the tags!

**_crav·ing_ **

**_/ˈkrāviNG/_ **

**_noun_ **

_an intense, urgent, or abnormal desire or longing._

**_01/2/2007_ **

_It’s January now, of 2007, and the air is filled with snow that doesn’t seem to reach the ground and a sense of newness. I hope that somehow my intuition is right, and that things will be different now._

_My team was called to Iowa two days before New Year’s Eve, to deal with a case that disturbed me quite a lot. I’m trying to put it out of my mind, but I have a hard time with that._

_We were not able to attend the party to which Derek was going to take me. He was sad to miss it. (I was not.)_

_We arrived back at Quantico an hour before midnight, and we huddled up in Hotch’s office with an extremely expensive bottle of champagne (courtesy of David Rossi, who handed his debit card to JJ, asked her to “run out and buy us something nice to drink,” and expressed no parameters) to watch the Times Square ball drop on TV. I would have mentioned that the ball is lit up by_ _32,256 LEDs, which, together, are capable of creating over 16 million unique hues, because I find it fascinating, but no one else seemed particularly interested in details, so I decided to just keep quiet._

_We counted down to midnight with an eager, almost nervous anticipation, as though changing the calendars would really mean something, and it weren’t all just arbitrary._

_Derek wrapped one arm around my shoulders and the other around Penelope’s as we waited for the clock to change._

_“This year will be better,” he whispered to me. “We had a bad year, but you and I, we’re good people, and I promise you we’ve got good things coming our way.”_

_I didn’t like that._

_It’s not as if we’ve been suffering on some cruel whim of fate; I have suffered as a result of my own choices, and Derek has suffered mostly because he’d stayed unfailingly beside me as I made all of these choices._

_We suffered because of_ **_me_ ** _._

 _But nevertheless, he says that “we” have good things in store,_ **_both_ ** _of us, like it doesn’t matter that_ **_I_ ** _was what caused him so much pain and suffering._

_I don’t like that._

_I wish that he would be angrier at me._

_I wish that he would blame me for what I’ve done to us, the way he ought to, so that I’d know he doesn’t blame himself. I wish that he were more cruel and less forgiving. He never shouts at me or slaps me the way my father did when I deeply upset him. I almost wish he would because somehow, I would feel less guilty if Derek were less of a saint._

_I don’t deserve a man like him._

_Regardless, when the clock struck midnight, Derek kissed Penelope on the cheek, tugged on my hair, and wished us both a happy new year._

_(‘My babies,’ he called us. “Happy New Year, my babies!”)_

_We left the building an hour or so later, and as we stepped out, we saw that the dreary rain had turned to snow while we were inside, and the entire parking lot had been covered with a thin white veil. It was as if all the world were a coloring book that had had its markings erased - a true blank slate._

_Everyone ‘ooh-ed’ and ‘ah-ed.’ We all parted ways, and I found that I had to drag my feet._

_It was like my body did not want me to leave this freshness behind._

_Like I was craving it._

_At home, Derek made love to me extra sweetly, to make up for the fact that he couldn’t kiss me in front of Hotchner. He always feels guilty about this, even though it isn’t his fault._

_“Make a New Year’s wish, baby,” he told me, curling around me from behind after he’d finished inside of me and cleaned me up._

_I told him no. I told him people who make wishes are statistically less likely to achieve their long-term goals, because they believe an outside force will do their work for them. I told him I wouldn’t have my work ethic thwarted by blind hope._

_“Make a New Year’s wish or I’m making one for you,” Derek said._

_So I did._

_I wished to stay clean._

* * *

Dr. Hicks hits the “start” button on the tape recorder. 

“Go ahead,” the aged addiction counselor urges, flashing a kind, paternal smile from where he sits on the other side of his dimly lit office.

Spencer sniffs and proceeds with his standard introduction. He’s never been quite sure why recording _all_ of his sessions is necessary, and he’s not especially fond of constantly offering up his identity for permanent record, but expressing hatred and mistrust of doctors is something that reminds him so much of his mother that he can’t possibly bring himself to protest.

“Um, my name is Dr. Spencer Reid. I’m a recovering IV opioid addict. Today’s date is...January third. Two days after the New Year. It’s...the overdose was last year. I can say that now. It feels good to say that. It’s like I’m...finally moving past it.”

“Mhm,” Dr. Hicks says. “I’m proud of you, Spencer. You’ve come a long way. How long have you been clean, as of right now?” 

As he asks the question, Hicks seems to shiver. He leans forward in his seat and braces his forearms against his knees. At such an angle, the sweat on his brow glimmers like broken glass, and the tiny golden cross he wears around his neck dangles out in front of his chest, as if it were attempting an escape. Spencer fights an inexplicable urge to grab the little thing and tuck it back inside his therapist’s collar. 

_It’s odd how entranced he looks,_ Spencer thinks, not for the first time; Hicks’ eyes are wide with terror, as though he’s personally invested his entire being into Spencer staying clean and is _desperate_ for updates. He’s truly involved. He perches on the edge of his seat like a nervous, wild bird, waiting for a ‘ _but_ ,’ as though a shortcoming would somehow impact him. Spencer recognizes this pleading, hopeful, terrified look, he realizes—this is the same look that Penelope Garcia had always given Spencer when she’d visited him in rehab. 

_That’s why it bothers me._

Hicks looks at him as though the two of them were friends— _family_ , even. Spencer has never been particularly good at reading people ( _an unfortunate state for a profiler, really_ ), but he’s uncomfortable with this emotional intimacy—it’s quite unprofessional. Spencer has never liked this business of spilling his guts at the feet of a man about whom he knows absolutely nothing. The fact that Hicks is so familiar with Spencer’s turmoil while Spencer knows only his name bothers him now more than ever.

Spencer leans back in his chair and almost involuntarily curls in on himself. He doesn’t want to be so close to Dr. Hicks’ sweating face, nor does he wish to leave his midsection vulnerable. However irrational this may be, there’s something off-putting about his therapist’s demeanor today.

“I’ve been clean for three-hundred twelve days now,” Spencer says.

“That’s fantastic!” Hicks exclaims. “ _Tremendous_ progress, Dr. Reid. I’m very proud. Tell me—how are you feeling today?”

“I’m…feeling alright.” Spencer twitches. “I’ve…I’ve been experiencing some very strange nightmares, uh, I think it might be a...side effect of the medication?” 

“Nightmares are not an especially common side effect, but it _can_ happen. ...I must say, Spencer, you seem _especially_ stressed today. Is something the matter? Is there anything else that may be causing you nightmares?” 

Spencer stares at the ground and gnaws on his lip. He briefly considers Derek, and how displeased he always is when he sees Spencer’s lip bleeding onto his chin, but the thought flits away from him, and he allows himself to indulge in nervousness. 

“I had a difficult case,” he mutters. “Right before the new year. At work. It was…it was just a little too close to home.”

“Are you comfortable telling me about this case?”

“Yes,” Spencer lies. He’s not comfortable, but he’s willing to share, and that’s close enough. “I’m...I work for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, so a lot of what we do is looking at victimology, which is, uh, determining who is targeted for violent crimes.” 

Hicks nods, and Spencer proceeds with his monologue.

“Our UnSub—um, our perpetrator—was targeting psychiatric patients.”

Hicks sits back in his seat and nods again. The odd shine in his eyes is gone, and he’s once again taken up his professional, mild manner. 

_Like flipping a switch._

“And that reflected you?” Hicks asks.

“Wh— _what?_ No.” Spencer tries not to be offended. He knows, of course, that Dr. Hicks means nothing by this, but his sanity is such a great insecurity that he can’t help but feel _prickly_ about it. “Um, the victims were inpatients dealing with issues that were...quite a bit more incapacitating than mine is right now. A lot like...like my mother, actually. I’ve told you.”

“Of course.”

“I...there were hits all over the country.” Spencer swallows the bare beginnings of tears. “She hadn’t answered my calls that day. I knew she wasn’t...but I...it was...hard. That’s what the...nightmares have been about.”

Hicks nods. “About your mother.”

“Right. Specifically about someone…harming my mother?”

“Can I ask you, Spencer,” Hicks starts, readjusting his seating, “whether your mother is being harmed by someone you know, in these dreams?”

Spencer clears his throat and shakes his head. His leg bounces up and down against the carpet, almost against his will. “Uh, no, not at all,” he promises. “I’m not even sure if it’s a person.”

“Is that so? Was it...an animal? Some sort of religious figure?”

As Hicks leans from one elbow to the other, Spencer’s eyes once again catch the light glistening off of his tiny golden cross. 

“No,” he says. “I’m not religious. Uh, it was some sort of...hairy-faced...woman.”

“A hairy-faced woman,” Hicks repeats. “So you’re...experiencing nightmares of a bearded woman?”

“No. It’s more like…” Spencer’s palms sweat as he recalls the creature. He gulps down bile, trying not to panic, wondering how he can _possibly_ convey just how _horrific_ the monster is. “Her...her face is made of hair. All of it, it’s...it’s a _skin-colored_ hair, and it moves like, uh, worms. Her hands are...maggots. Or, they leak maggots. It...it changes.”

Hicks frowns. “In these dreams, Spencer—are you afraid she’s going to harm you?” 

It’s a simple question, yet somehow, it’s one that Spencer has never asked himself before.

_I guess that’s why I come here._

“No,” he realizes. “I’m not. Never.” 

“Do you think,” Dr. Hicks asks, “your subconscious may believe that you have the power to stop this monster?”

Spencer stares out Hicks’ office window at the snowfall and allows his eyes to glaze over. The red brake lights that litter the parking lot seem almost _welcoming_ in Spencer’s intentionally-softened version of the world, even as they rest up against the dirty snow and 4:30 sunset.

“The _power to stop it?_ ” He whispers. “I...don’t know.”

* * *

Derek’s “workshop” is a refurbished half of the basement where he’s set up some sort of bench and a frankly obscene number of power tools. 

Theoretically, Spencer knows tools, but that’s only _theoretically—_ he has _no idea_ what variations of which tools Derek keeps down here, because he tries to avoid the workshop whenever he can. He _hates_ the grinding, whining sounds they make, so much that he never really gets close enough to compare the tools in the basement to the ones he’s seen in books. 

Derek loves the tools. He loves to be in the basement, making benches and shelves out of hickory wood. (Spencer doesn’t get it, but he’s glad that Derek is happy.)

Derek is in the workshop when Spencer gets home from therapy, and Spencer enters the room with his hands over his ears, shouting at Derek to _turn that thing off_ , proud of himself for braving the dreaded grinding noise. 

“Sander,” Derek says, once he’s turned the hated machine off and removed his stupid safety goggles.

“What?” Spencer asks. 

“Sander,” Derek repeats. “The _‘thing.’_ It’s called a sander.”

Spencer leans over a large board on the ground and kisses Derek lightly. 

“Whatever it is,” he says, “the sound makes me itch. _Please_ stop messing with it now.”

Laughing goodnaturedly, Derek pulls Spencer in (leading him to stumble ever-so-slightly over the board) and scratches gently at his arms. 

“There,” he mumbles. “Got your itch. That better?”

“Mmm...” Spencer kisses him again. “ _Now_ it is.”

Derek pulls away and tugs at a loose curl hanging in Spencer’s face. “Hey, I meant to ask—how’s the baby?” 

Spencer blinks. “ _Baby?_ ”

Derek raises an eyebrow. “...Henry?” He prompts. “Blond dude? Kinda short, ‘bout one-foot-ten?”

_Fuck._

Derek doesn’t know about Hicks.

Spencer was supposed to have been visiting JJ this evening.

 _Fuck, fuck, fuck._

“ _Henry,_ ” Spencer breathes, trying to smooth over his panic. “Oh, oh, of course. Yeah, he’s...he’s doing well.”

_Change the subject._

“Um...hey, what’ve you got going on here?”

Derek drops the overtly skeptical look after a few seconds of Spencer not cracking, but he still seems unconvinced. 

Sometimes, Spencer hates living with a profiler. One of the _best_ profilers he’s ever known, at that. He wonders how long it’ll be before he’s found out.

Derek lifts his creation haphazardly, with one hand, like he couldn’t possibly care less if it broke. 

“Bench,” he says simply.

“Oh, goodness gracious, we have _enough_ of those,” Spencer protests. “Honey, you already made one for the porch and one for the yard, and we have a chair version of your bench in the guest room.”

Derek grins. “I know that, smartypants.” He gently whacks Spencer on the head with the beginnings of his bench. “It’s for my mama.” 

Spencer leans in to kiss him once more. “You know what you should make next?” He mumbles against his lover’s lips.

“Hmm. What?”

“Dinner. C’mon.”

* * *

_Spencer calls out for her to stop._

_This time, she hears him._

_She drops the rock—is that her weapon? A rock, all this time, it’s been a rock? and turns to face him._

_Her face, he realizes, is not made of hair—worms, he realizes—and there is rot, dear_ **_god_** _, a rot that smells of something worse than death, far worse than death._

_It sits in the middle of her face, right where her eyes ought to be, and the maggots crawl in and out. and his mother’s blood drips from her rotting eye sockets._

_Bile rises in his throat, but he walks towards her nonetheless._

_Does he have the power to stop her?_

_He walks toward her._

_Around her neck lies a small, golden cross._

_Dear_ **_god_** _, the rot._

_Still, he presses forward._

* * *

Spencer wakes up on the back deck with Derek’s large, warm hands on his shoulders. He’s barefoot in the snow and wearing nothing but his briefs and a long-sleeved cotton shirt (which used to belong to Derek), but the wind seems to nip particularly unforgivingly at his face. 

It’s painful, and he’s humiliated. He’s not sure _why_ , but he knows that he’s humiliated. 

It’s a moment before he realizes that his face is wet with tears and snot, and another before he realizes that he’s bit his lip in the same spot he always does and bled onto his chin.

“ _Spencer_?” 

Derek ( _whose voice sounds a bit like he’s underwater_ ) pulls Spencer to his chest, rubbing his sides in an attempt to warm him. 

Spencer startles in his arms, as though his brain has been slowed down by the cold and he’s _just now_ awoken, but Derek only shushes him. 

“Hey, baby boy, easy. It’s okay. Oh, my love, don’t cry. You were just sleepwalking. Bad dream?”

Spencer wraps his arms around Derek’s waist. It’s an attempt to both absorb Derek’s heat and ground himself to the Earth—he’s certain that somehow, if he lets go of his love, he’ll float endlessly up into the Heavens and be forgotten. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into Derek’s neck. 

He’s unsure as to what he’s apologizing for, but it falls from his lips so naturally that he can only assume he’s apologizing for _everything—_ for every wretched, hellish, scorching thing he ever was, ever said, ever shot from a filthy needle into long-collapsed veins under a freeway overpass.

“For what?” Derek asks.

_For what, for what?_

“Waking you up,” Spencer decides. 

_Good thinking._

Derek kisses his cheek. “It’s okay. Not your fault. Let’s go inside, though, okay?’

Spencer nods.

He allows himself to be guided inside and back into bed.

Derek falls asleep first, of course, with his arms tight and protective around Spencer’s middle. (Spencer has always envied his ability to fall asleep effortlessly and instantly. It’s almost obscene how quickly Derek conks out.) 

_Sleepwalkers,_ Spencer remembers as he listens to Derek’s heart beat at a balmy 53 BMP, _tend to be aggressive and angry during waking and in the moments that follow_. 

He hadn’t been aggressive, had he? 

No; even sleepwalking, he's passive, cooperative, and submissive, just as he is in all things. 

_If I have a redeeming quality_ , he thinks to himself, _I suppose that’s it._

Spencer stares with lidded eyes at the two-inch gap beneath the blinds covering the window opposite him.

Derek had left the porch light on, and the various holes in the blinds cast a slight, warm glow upon the bedroom. 

_He did that on purpose,_ Spencer realizes with a sleepy smile.

He tucks his head beneath Derek’s chin, kisses his collarbone, and settles in.

As he closes his eyes, he swears he can see something move in front of the light, but he chalks it up to nothing.

* * *

**_1/05/2007_ **

_I had the same nightmare again, but this time, I was in REM sleep, so I did not sleepwalk, and the dream was vivid and poignant._

_This time, instead of a wormy-faced, maggot-dripping monster, I dreamt of Elle Greenaway._

_I liked Elle Greenaway._

_She treated me like I was capable, or I was worthy of something. Elle Greenaway never pitied me or looked at me with that tragic face people like to give me, as if I’m some sort of lost little suffering puppy—I was no more or less important than anyone else, in her eyes._

_She was my biggest failure, to tell you the truth, of which I am ashamed to this day._

_Before I’d ever kissed Derek, before I understood I was gay, she kissed me outside of a theater downtown. (We never spoke about it again. Maybe she knew before I did.)_

_She asked me if I’d ever kissed a woman before, and I said no. She thought that was funny. I liked her laugh so much that I couldn’t even feel hurt._

_“You’re so pretty, Reid,” she said. “You’re so pretty for a boy. But you have such sad eyes. Why are you so sad, huh? What happened to you, Spencer?”_

_I said I didn’t know, but that wasn’t true._

_In the dream, she was covered in blood, and it was not her own._

_I could tell that it was not her own._

_I did not see my mother, but somehow, I knew._

_Of course I knew._

_“Why didn’t you stop it?” She asked me in a horrible, wailing voice. Her mouth moved wrong, all wrong - too open, too wet, too slow, as if she were made out of clay. “Last time, Reid, why didn’t you stop it?_

_I told her sorry. I told her I couldn’t._

_“Of course you fucking couldn’t,” she shrieked, her jaw unhinging and falling from her face like that of a rotting corpse. “You’re weak, Reid. You can’t stop it. You’re too weak to stop it. You’re too weak to stop. You could never stop. Never stop, never ever stop.”_

_I woke up itchy and terrified._

_It seemed so real, far more real than the worm-faced woman._

_I spent the morning distracted, hovering elsewhere, unsure if the world around me was real at all or I was still dreaming._

_I half expected Derek’s jaw to rot right off of his face as I watched him eat breakfast._

_His jaw did not rot off, but he chewed all of the crushed ice in his juice glass, and the sound made my teeth ache and my hair stand on end, so I left the kitchen._

_Stood in front of the bathroom mirror just looking at myself._

_Emily Prentiss once grabbed my waist and told me I looked like I was starving to death. I think of it now and then, and the more I do, the more I think she may have been right._

_I hate the way I look. I hate my narrow waist and the place that caves in at the center of my chest, and I hate the horrible, grayish scars that hover over all of my formerly-infected injection sites.  
_

_Standing at the mirror, I scratched at the scars until I started bleeding, as if they were fresh scabs and picking at them would tear them away and leave me raw and torn open, the way I like to be._

_Derek walked in to ask me what was taking me so long and saw me standing there, bleeding into the sink. That reminded me of things I don’t like to talk about, so I started to cry._

_He grabbed my arm and started bustling around me, bandaging me up, asking what happened, and, finally, rinsing out the sink._

_I watched my blood become so watered down that it disappeared, and I wished that I could be like Derek._

_I wish that I could rinse things away. Water them down until they’re gone. I wish that I could just see something once and then never see it again. I wish I didn’t remember everything, everything, everything._

_Derek tries to help me scrub things away. He distracts me, talks with me, washes my scratches out, deletes my dealer’s numbers from my phone._

_But it never works, does it? Not even close._

_I remember everything, everything, everything._

_I suppose I’m just too weak to stop it._


	2. Rationalize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sleeplessness gives way to worse things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to agib and rxseinbloom for beta reading this for me!!!! Go check out their work if you haven't - I adore them both very much :)

_**ra·tion·al·ize** _

_**/ˈraSHənlˌīz** _

_**verb** _

_to ascribe (one's acts, opinions, etc.) to causes that superficially seem reasonable and valid but that actually are unrelated to the true, possibly unconscious and often less creditable or agreeable causes._

  
  


**_01/16/2007_ **

_Finished up a case in rural North Dakota._

_What a place. A barren wasteland, snow and decaying gravel roads and thick, heavy, gray clouds as far as I could see. The snow whipped around the air and stung my face and my breath. Blocked out the sun. I felt as though it were just before dusk - there was a gray-purple tinge to it all._

_On our way into town, I was in a car with Derek and Emily, and we passed a billboard that said:_

**_HEAVEN VS. HELL -_ **

**_WHERE DO YOU WANT TO SPEND ETERNITY?_ **

_I almost threw up, thinking of Tobias Hankel and how I murdered him in cold blood after he saved my life._

_“What kinda stupid question is that?” Derek asked, reaching across the median into my bag of Sour Patch Kids. (I let him take some, including a blue one, because I felt generous, but I reminded him to please keep both hands on the wheel.)_

_“I’m probably going to hell,” Emily said. “You know, realistically speaking. Doesn’t bother me, though. Happy to serve time with my fellow sinners.”_

_Derek grinned and shook his head. “Yeah. I don’t think you quite get how Hell works. Hope you like eating your own damn boiled eyeballs for breakfast, Prentiss. None for me. I’m a man of God.”_

_I reminded both of them that the Bible does not say anything about what sort of torment is issued in Hell, and that most of these more concrete ideas come from Dante. I told them that conditional immortality is a more appropriate way of thinking of Heaven. Hell, I said, is really just akin to burning alive once and conceding to eternal death._

_“You sure know how to party, Reid,” Emily said._

_(If I’m so smart, why do I make myself look so goddamn stupid all the time?)_

_The case took us a week and a half. It ended as well as it could have, and that is all I want to say about it just yet. I hurt myself a little bit - split the skin on my kneecap tripping down a ditch - and JJ hovered over me, deeply upset, like they hadn’t fixed it in fifteen minutes with steri-strips._

_She doesn’t do that to anyone else._

_Everyone gets hurt, and she doesn’t do that to anyone else but me._

_“Do you think I’m weak?” I asked her, without even really meaning to. (I wasn’t accusing - just wondering. They treat me like a baby sometimes and JJ is particularly guilty of this.)_

_She blinked at me. “Of course not.”_

_I said, “You’re never this worried about Derek.”_

_And she just said, well, you’re not Derek, are you? And then she handed me a coffee and left._

_Then I felt horrible, because she was just trying to be kind and it was another thing I ruined._

_I’ve not been sleeping. Staying awake as many hours of the night as possible, dodging the things that await me when I close my eyes._

_When we passed through security at the airport on the way home, and I took off my shoes, my hands were trembling so violently (after too many days of too little sleep and too much caffeine) that I couldn’t lace them back up._

_Derek crouched between my ankles and tied them for me, swatting my hands away and kissing me in the center of my crumpled, sweaty forehead._

_“We’ll be home soon,” he mumbled._

_I think Derek thinks I don’t like North Dakota._

_Which is not true - I like North Dakota as well as anywhere else._

_I don’t want to be in North Dakota, but I don’t want to be home, either. I have no preference - I’ve realized that the melancholia is inside me and not around me, and it will not leave me regardless of where I am._

_What I really want is to sleep peacefully for a very long time, or maybe even forever._

* * *

The snowstorm over the Midwest does not yield for their journey home. 

It strengthens, in fact, to an untenable degree, and they make an emergency landing at O’Hare airport in Chicago, Illinois at 1:16 AM Central Time.

Hotch wakes everyone up (everyone but Spencer, that is, who is awake and trembling for the entire landing ordeal) and tells them that they need to head inside the terminal until he can have the Bureau make lodging arrangements for their group.

“I’m sorry about this, everyone,” he says, walking down the aisle to shake Rossi awake. He sounds genuine enough that Spencer feels terribly for him.

“ _Great,_ ” Emily (who _hates_ being woken, _especially_ while travelling) snaps. “How fucking long is that gonna be?”

“I don’t know,” Hotch tells her. “Don’t use that language with me, please.”

“Fuck you,” she mutters.

Hotch, who, after nearly two years of Emily, knows how to pick his battles, says nothing.

Derek, of course, is _excited_ to land in Chicago, and he asks Hotch if he can go visit his mother for the night. 

“I’ll bring Reid with me,” he says. (Hotch is technically not supposed to know about their relationship, so this elicits an especially deep scowl.) “They wouldn’t have to find rooms for us. It’d be easier.” 

“I don’t want anyone away from the group with the weather the way it is. I need to be sure you can get back in the morning.” 

“We can take the train back. Snow’s no thing up here. Come on, Hotch. I _never_ get to see my family.” 

Hotchner shifts. “Well, as of right now, we’ve yet to officially close this case, so _you_ are still under _my_ jurisdiction, and I’m telling you that, for _safety reasons,_ no one is lodging away from the team with the conditions like they are. Is that understood?” 

Hotch is not so different from Spencer, really, in this regard—he, too, clearly enjoys the reliability of their journey to and from a case site. 

Whatever happens while they’re away, the jet is always there to escort them back home. It’s their security blanket. No matter what sorts of indescribable horrors, sleepless nights, and disgustingly unscheduled days befall them when they travel, the journey back is the same every time—they sit quietly in their unassigned assigned seats and pretend not to notice as Hotch performs a head count over and over and over again. 

_This_ is not supposed to happen. 

_This_ is not part of the plan. They’re caught in a surreal space that feels forbidden, almost _liminal,_ and they’re hovering somewhere between the adrenaline-soaked terror of pursuing a serial murderer and the comforting monotony of home. 

Spencer squeezes Derek’s knee. 

_Just let it go,_ he thinks. 

Derek looks crestfallen and angry, which damn near breaks Spencer’s heart, but he agrees to stay with the team.

Spencer rests his forehead on Derek’s shoulder. “I love you,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”

“I love _you_. Stop saying sorry to me.”

“...And I’m nervous. Are you nervous?”

Wrapping an arm around Spencer’s shoulders, Derek kisses his messy hair. “I’m not nervous, no. About what?”

The snow whips wildly around the plane outside, and Spencer almost feels as if he could look out the window and see something staring back at him through the swirling and the darkness. 

“I don’t know,” he mumbles, sinking into Derek’s warmth. “I guess I’m just tired.” 

* * *

Hotch gathers them together in a huddle at the end of the jet tunnel and insists that everyone stays with a _buddy_ for the time being, like they’re a band of rowdy first graders on a school trip and he is their world-weary chaperone.

“This is a very big airport,” he says, as if they hadn’t just confronted an armed serial killer. “I don’t want anyone getting lost. Service can be spotty underground. Leave your phones on and stick with a buddy, so that I’ll be sure I can reach you once we have lodging.”

They start off together—all six of them—at a 24-7 breakfast taco place, but JJ and Emily break away to use the bathrooms, and Derek drags Spencer over to sit in the chairs by the loading gates, since the chairs at the breakfast taco place are “too damn hard” for “this time of night.”

Spencer’s okay with that—he always grows _extremely_ tired of Rossi at about this point in any case.

Even in more comfortable seating, Spencer can’t relax, because the whole airport seems to be on edge with the storm. It’s lit with a sickly fluorescent glow and full of that _dreadfully_ anxious feeling of being in neither one place nor the other. It makes Spencer’s exhaustion feel like a persistent itch at the inside of his skull.

“So,” a fat, pale, balding man sitting across from Derek starts. “Where are y’all headed?”

Spencer _hates_ small talk, even when he’s at his best, which he most certainly is _not_ at this time.

He gently kicks Derek in the heel.

Derek likes this sort of conversation.

_You get it._

“Home,” Derek says, receiving the message in record time. “You?”

“Same. Atlanta. I was up on business. It’ll feel good to be back. I got two little girls. Lord knows I’ve been missin’ ‘em. Where’s home for you? What’re you travelin’ for?”

“That’s good, man. That’s good. Good for you. I’m sure they miss their Daddy just as much. Home is DC. We’re FBI, travelling for casework. Stranded in the snowstorm.”

(Spencer is perpetually in awe at how good Derek is at chit-chat. _Where does he come up with this?_ )

The guy nods. “Sucks. They delayed your flight? Mine’s comin’ along fine.”

“Nah, we fly private. Had to land. The plane’s small, so it’s more dangerous to fly through a storm.”

The stranger nods again. “Sounds nice. I mean...under normal situations. So. FBI, huh?’

“In the flesh.”

“Hey, check this out. Noticed that earlier— _sterile needle disposal,_ ” the man mutters, pointing at a container attached to the wall in front of the bathrooms. “Can you believe that, huh? Right here, in front of all these people? Folks have got _kids_ in this place.”

Spencer swallows, and Derek grabs his arm. 

(Spencer can’t help but wonder what Derek’s _plan_ is here. Is he going to shove Spencer behind him? Use his body to shield him from the reality of his own choices?)

“I feel like...why _help_ these people, ya know?” He continues. “Just lock ‘em up. My sister in law was a junkie. They just make the same choices over and over. Man, you can do _everything_ right, and you still can’t help these people. They’re like dogs. They don’t think. They just _do._ You gotta wonder if it’d be better if we just let them weed themselves out. Overdose and get it over with. It’s genetic, ain’t it?”

“Quit talking to me,” Derek orders. 

The Atlanta businessman freezes. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Just makin’ conversation, man. You said you were FBI, I thought all that “ _tough on crime”_ stuff…”

“Let’s go, Spencer,” Derek mutters, pulling him to his feet.

They move quickly away from the seating area, but Spencer can’t resist the urge to continually glance back over his shoulder at the round Atlanta businessman and the sterile needle disposal bin.

“I don’t know _how_ someone can _say_ shit like that,” Derek mutters as they walk swiftly and aimlessly in the other direction. “I’m so sorry that happened, baby.”

Spencer shrugs and stares down at his feet. “It’s...at least a little true. I mean—”

“Come on. No, it’s not. Don’t start.”

“Haven’t you _ever_ thought you’d be better off if Hankel had just…” Spencer cuts himself off mid-sentence.

_As if Derek would admit to that._

“Had just _what?_ ” Derek demands.

“Nothing.” 

“It wasn’t _nothing._ What were you gonna say?”

But Derek’s phone rings before Spencer has to answer for his words, and they’re summoned by the hand of God (in the temporary form of Hotch) out into the snow for a cab. 

* * *

Spencer tries to keep himself awake that night, but the exhaustion of the past week is far too much for him to withstand. 

He falls asleep tucked into the crook of Derek’s arm. 

The dreaded familiar figure awaits him as he does.

* * *

He wakes up half an hour later, his cheeks damp with tears and Derek’s lips on his face. 

For just a moment, Spencer is _sure_ that he sees something lurking in the far, dark corner of their hotel room, but he passes quickly between the _here_ and the _there_ , and it’s almost immediately as if nothing had happened at all.

“Sweetheart,” Derek whispers, pulling Spencer into his body to rub soothing circles into his back. “Oh, my baby, what’s wrong?”

But he has no words.

There’s nothing left to say.

* * *

At home, Derek lugs their bags inside, dumps them on the living room floor, and stops abruptly in the entryway to stare across the room.

Spencer, who is trailing behind him like a lost puppy, empty-handed but for his leather satchel, bumps into his back and freezes in his tracks.

Derek has done this before. 

_Many_ times, actually—stopping in a doorway to keep Spencer behind him is a common Derek practice in the field. 

_Danger,_ Spencer thinks, and remembers the monster of his nightmares. _This means danger._

He turns to the living room, and he half expects to see it there waiting for him, with the blood that is decidedly not its own soaking its infested hands.

There’s nothing there.

“I guess we should get rid of that, huh?” Derek remarks.

“What?” Spencer asks. 

Derek gestures noncommittally across the floor at the shriveled, shedding remains of their Christmas tree. “What is it, now, like, mid-January? Gross.” 

“Oh,” Spencer mumbles. “Yeah, I guess we should.”

_God, I need to sleep._

* * *

Spencer never liked Christmas until he became an honorary member of the Morgan family. 

Growing up, he had always hated watching the world around him build up to a climax that would pass him by without so much as a nod. He and his mother were barely getting by on a good day, since it was difficult for Diana to keep a job, and Spencer can’t remember _ever_ having enough extra income for a Christmas tree or presents. 

It was always the longest, loneliest time of year. The holiday season was a bitter reminder of the normal sort of family Spencer _didn’t_ have, and he was never able to shake the taste it left in his mouth until he _had_ that sort of family. 

Christmas has grown on Spencer enormously in the three years that he and Derek have been together, though he’ll never admit as much. He feels like he finally understands the appeal. Derek has so many cousins that he can’t keep them all straight, a house where the heat is always on, and a mother who always remembers him. That’s all Spencer had ever wanted during the holidays, really. He feels he’s been assimilated into something he doesn’t quite deserve, but that welcomes him warmly nonetheless. 

He thinks as he watches Derek try to wriggle their decrepit, now-undecorated tree out of its stand, that he’s going to miss its happy little decorations. 

He almost wishes they could have the tree up year-round.

Derek yanks at the tree around the middle, and he pulls it out of the stand with a low grinding sound ( _like a regular goddamn Paul Bunyun,_ Spencer thinks). 

The top of the tree brushes against the wall and comes _dangerously_ close to hitting the lamp on their mantlepiece.

“Get the—move the stump— _left!_ ” Spencer shouts. “Move it _to the left!_ ” 

“I’m _moving_ it to the left,” Derek protests, his upper body obscured by the tree. “What do you want from me?”

“You’re moving it _right,_ ” Spencer insists, “and you’re— _Der. Stop._ You’re about to break my lamp. You _need_ to be more careful!”

“If you know so much, move this thing yourself. The lamp is— _ow_ , dammit— _on_ the left. You’re talking about _your_ left, Spencer. My right is your left.”

“What? Yeah, I’m talking about my left. Why would I be talking about _your_ left?” 

They carry on like this for a while until Derek has successfully hauled the tree out to the curb and left Spencer alone inside with a dejected pile of needles. 

He’s about to head to the pantry for the broom when he sees something shiny and just-barely-visible poking out from behind the tree skirt.

 _The angel wing,_ he realizes. _It must’ve fallen off the tree._

Spencer bends down and gently picks the poor thing up from where it sits in the corner. Its porcelain face has been cracked from top to bottom, and its dress has been stained by the dirty water in the base of the tree stand. 

He runs his finger over the glass. 

“Poor little angel,” he mumbles. “What happened to you?”

* * *

Derek gets to pick the movies they watch on the nights they get home from an away-case.

This is because he likes to take his mind off of the violence by watching onscreen violence ( _dumb boy movies,_ Penelope calls them, about CIA agents saving the world or jewel thieves on the run from the FBI), and Spencer likes to take his mind off of the violence by lying on top of Derek’s chest and listening to his heartbeat. 

Tonight, he feels especially clingy, as if burrowing so deeply into Derek they nearly become one being will block out the nightmares.

“It’s good to be home,” Derek mumbles, wrapping one of Spencer’s curls around his index finger.

Spencer, _ungodly_ exhausted, just hums and nuzzles his face into Derek’s neck. 

Derek kisses the top of his head and gently walks his fingers down his spine. “You know, I missed being alone with you,” he whispers. 

“Mmm. Not right now,” Spencer mumbles, tightening his grip on Derek’s ribcage. “I’m sorry. ‘M just so tired.”

“That’s okay. Never be sorry for saying no.”

Derek is such an angel. 

Spencer _desperately_ wishes he were less of an angel. Sometimes, he wants nothing more than to be hit or shouted at.

Sometimes, he only wants what he deserves.

Derek kisses Spencer’s hair again. “I’ve been meaning to check on you, actually. You okay, sugar?”

Spencer tenses and opens his eyes. “Yes.”

“No, you’re not. That’s why I didn’t ask on the road. C’mon.”

Derek wears a tiny gold chain around his neck.

Spencer likes to play with it when he’s nervous. 

He grabs the beloved chain and rolls it between his fingers, trying to zap his plethora of nervous energy out of his body through the tiny movements. 

“Then why did you even _ask?_ ” He demands.

“I was giving you the chance to be honest with me,” Derek says. “You don’t wanna take it, that’s okay. But just know that I can tell something is up with you right now. I’m not stupid.”

Spencer drops the chain. “Alright,” he whispers. “I’m having... dreams.”

“Dreams?”

“Nightmares. Unbearable ones. About my mom. And I haven’t been sleeping, because it’s…unbearable.”

Derek exhales and gently combs his fingers through Spencer’s hair. “Baby, you could’ve told me,” he says after a brief moment of silence. 

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Why _didn’t_ you tell me? You know you...can tell me anything, right?”

The question—the _worry_ that comes at not being confided in—is not about these _dreams,_ and they both know it. 

There’s a bigger, more frightening, far less topical question here, to which Spencer is _sure_ Derek doesn’t want an honest answer:

_Do you trust me, Spencer?_

And within that:

_Do you swear to tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?_

_If you use again, if you want to use again, if the thought so much as crosses your mind upon a glance at an IV disposal in an airport, will you tell me?_

Spencer swallows and snatches up the chain again. “Because I knew you would freak out.”

“ _What?_ Why would I freak out? I’m not freaking out, am I?”

“Well, I mean, _now_ you are. Your heart rate just picked up. A _lot_. So, medically, yes, you are.”

“ _Why_ would I freak out, Spencer? Is there something I should be freaked out about?”

Spencer sits up and gently shoves Derek away from him. “No,” he says coldly, standing up to head for the bathroom. 

God, Spencer _hates_ arguing with Derek, somehow even _more_ so in this roundabout way where they’re not _really_ arguing, and he doesn’t want his fearless, stoic lover to see him cry over spilt milk like this. Not _again—_ not for a second time in a single day.

 _Why do I always look so goddamn stupid?_

“Can I have the cabinet key?” Spencer asks, determined not to let his voice break. “I want to try taking my Doxepin.”

Derek knits his brows together and frowns. _Worry. Hesitation._ “You sure? That stuff always made you sick.”

“ _Please,”_ Spencer insists, painfully aware of how pathetic he sounds.

Derek sighs. 

He rolls over to reach beneath his corner of their mattress and toss Spencer the key to the prescriptions cabinet.

Spencer hates this little key. It’s about an inch long, and it looks just like every other key on the planet, but it’s such a loaded object—so _perfectly,_ nauseatingly symbolic of the addiction—that it makes Spencer shiver. It smacks of illness and shattered trust. It serves as a reminder to Spencer that Derek can’t trust him in their own home. It’s baby-proofing for a grown man.

“I’ll be out soon,” Spencer mutters.

* * *

Spencer can’t really explain why the implication that he might be using to cope with the dreams bothers him so much.

 _I don’t know why I’m so emotional,_ he thinks to himself as he catches a glimpse of his dark, sunken eyes and bandaged up arms in the bathroom mirror while opening the cabinet. 

_I just don’t understand it._

_I can’t understand myself._

That’s a lie, though—he’s fairly sure he understands it all perfectly. 

_If I had a supply,_ he realizes, _I wouldn’t say no.  
_

_I couldn’t._

_Junkie._

Directly behind Spencer’s bottle of Doxepin, which he hasn’t moved in _months,_ there’s a tiny, translucent green pill carrier with Derek’s name scrawled on the top in Sharpie. 

It’s a summery oasis in this dark, horrid, wintery hellscape which Spencer has been roaming, and he falls apart at the sight of it.

 _I’ve seen this before,_ he realizes. 

He can’t quite explain what happens next.

It’s as if he loses control of himself—like he’s _possessed._

_Fucking junkie._

He takes the carrier off of the shelf.

_Let them weed themselves out, you know?_

Opens the cap.

_Overdose and get it over with._

Derek had been prescribed two weeks worth of Oxycontin a few months ago, to treat the pain of two broken ribs. 

Spencer remembers it all vividly; the field injury, the clean, sterile doctor’s office, the _legal_ prescription that Derek had stopped taking as soon as the pain became less unbearable, because he didn’t want to _“end up like Spencer.”_

That was what JJ had said— _you don’t wanna end up like Spence, Derek. I mean, you know how much I love him, but…_

That’s how it always is. Loving Spencer is always followed by a “but.” 

_It’s never unconditional._

_Junkie._

Derek had hidden the pills one night after he thought Spencer had fallen asleep. 

Dumped them from their marked, orange bottle into a nondescript pill carrier and tucked them back into the locking cabinet. 

Spencer, who was eight months clean at the time, had watched him and tried not to be offended. 

_He hid them_ , Spencer realizes. _He did everything right._

He hid them, and he hid them _behind the Doxepin—_ of _course,_ because Spencer never _takes_ the Doxepin, because it makes him sick to his stomach. 

_You do everything right, and you just can’t help a person like that._

Derek must’ve forgotten. 

He must’ve just stopped taking the pills and forgotten all about them.

About how they feel.

 _What I wouldn’t give to forget,_ Spencer thinks, running a trembling hand through his hair. 

He glances, again, at his miserable, sunken, exhausted face staring back at him from the mirror. 

The lights in this bathroom hurt his eyes, and Spencer can’t help but feel like he looks high already.

_What I wouldn’t give to be able to just forget._

God, he wishes he could _forget,_ forget the nightmares, the _maggots,_ the fucking _rot,_ the way he’d always slept so _soundly_ with Dilaudid. The way a _single_ fix could bring color to the darkest corners of his world and make him feel _ethereal,_ as though the sun was shining right through his body...

The way he’d _slept—_ what he wouldn’t give for that.

Spencer uncaps the carrier and stares down at its contents. 

He’s just so _tired._

He just wants to _sleep._

_It’s just to get to sleep._

* * *

The pill doesn’t kick in right away, and Spencer is in bed a few minutes before he starts to feel dizzy.

The high is more intense than he had expected, and this concerns him just a little bit. 

Ten milligrams could _never_ have done this to him this time last year, at the height of his active addiction, but he supposes his tolerance must have weakened, because he _definitely_ feels it. 

It runs through him like sunshine, just as he had remembered.

Spencer smiles.

He faces away from Derek, afraid he might somehow notice a familiar sparkle of euphoria in his eyes piercing through the dark. 

He tries to summon guilt, but it sits beneath the surface, not yet warm enough to boil over. He’s so _happy_. All he can feel as the drug enters his bloodstream is _relief_. 

He’s warm. 

He feels so heavy he could sink right through the mattress and float down into the kitchen, and he’s so, so sleepy. He’s going to _sleep,_ all night, and for just a while, he’s going to feel nothing, think nothing, and remember _nothing_.

“Hey,” Derek whispers, wrapping an arm around Spencer’s torso to spoon him from behind. “Baby, I’m sorry. I had no right. That was wrong. I know how hard you worked to change.”

Spencer, who has one foot there in their bed and one foot off in the clouds, suddenly feels the guilt boil over, and he freezes under Derek’s touch. 

“I’m scared about relapse because I love you,” Derek continues. “When you were in active addiction, I was so _scared_. Every day. I just can’t go back to living like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Spencer whispers.

He tries to scold himself, hate himself, conjure up that seething self loathing he’s lived with for twenty six years, but he just can’t form the thoughts that typically come so easily. 

Derek keeps talking at him, but it makes very little sense. Spencer notices that he’s crying, but he’s not sure why, or when it started.

Eventually, he conjures up a coherent apology that he keeps to himself:

_I’m sorry I ruined us._

_No,_ he immediately thinks. 

_Not right._

_It can’t be that bad._

It’s not like heroin. 

It’s not like heroin at all, in fact—Spencer is just taking it to sleep, after all. It’s not recreational. It was just to keep the nightmares away. 

Not tak _ing,_ really - it was just one. Ten milligrams. That’s all.

No more.

Never again.

It’s not like heroin. 

It’s no worse than a sleeping pill.

_Is it?_

**_01/17/07_**

_What have I done?_

_Oh, my God, what have I done?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 😬 Hope you liked this!!  
> Please leave a comment if you enjoyed. Tell me what your favorite part was- I'd love to hear!!!  
> Love you!!


	3. Promise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, guys!!! Sorry for the hiatus on this. I've been completely swamped with midterms, but I promise I'm gonna start updating more regularly now. :) Thanks for sticking with me!!!

_**prom·ise** _

_** /ˈpräməs/ ** _

**noun**

_a declaration or assurance that one will do a particular thing, or that a particular thing will happen._

**_01/21/2007_**

_Last year, when I was first getting clean and I left inpatient rehab, Derek took me away from the city, out to a remote beach property he used to own._

_This was so that I could not be near my dealer network._

_Derek said we were just taking a little trip to celebrate the end of my detox, but I knew the truth. (I wished he would just tell me the truth. I’m not stupid!) That trip was nothing close to a celebration; it was a necessity. And pure suffering. A dark twilight at the end of a long, wintery year._

_Nonetheless, I was grateful._

_The whole drive there, Derek didn’t talk to me, and I looked out my window at the wet, sticky, overcast South, picking my nails down to the middles of my fingers, wanting my drug and watching the blurry world fade from city to mountains to sand dunes._ _  
__“JJ still isn’t speaking to me,” I said, once DC was so far behind us that I felt safe._

_Derek told me that she didn’t have to, and I should leave her alone._

_“What if she never talks to me again?”_

_“She doesn’t have to.”_

_I started crying from that. JJ was such a dear friend and I was so sad to lose her. “I told her I was sorry,” I reminded him. “I said I was sorry, and I...I performed acts of restitution to help her trust me again. That’s supposed to help.”_

_“Well, maybe it won’t,” Derek said. “Maybe she’ll never trust you again. Can you blame her?_ **_You_ ** _left her on her own in the middle of nowhere at night._ **_You_ ** _wasted that precious time, and_ **_you_ ** _put_ **_all of us_ ** _on the line. If we hadn’t found…look, I’m just saying—if JJ never wants to speak to you again, good for her. Don’t get it twisted. Don’t forget who abandoned who.”_

_I cried harder. I reminded him that we were supposed to be family. I said it was a mistake. “I was sick,” I said. “I was sick, Der. I wasn’t thinking.”_

_“What do you want? You want me to feel sorry for you, Spencer? You left our family before they left you.”_

_I was so upset that I got sick._

_I left my family and they left me._

_All I could think was that that must mean I was alone again._

_We had to pull over so that I could throw up acid and bile. I got all dizzy and fell on my face in the grass. In my mess. My arms couldn’t lift me up, so I just looked sideways and felt like I was going to die. I didn’t know how much time was passing. It was hot and sticky. I was just a few feet from a roadside memorial with fourteen (I counted) faded plastic flowers and a faded little plastic angel statue positioned between a cement cross and the highway, like it was guarding the memories._

_I don’t think I ever felt so awful._

_Anyway, the reason I’m thinking about that is that tonight, we had dinner at the Jareau-Lamontagne house._

_Penelope brought Kevin with her, and she got drunk and made fun of his hair, which was really funny. Derek pulled me into his lap on the couch and I stayed there with my face against his collarbone, watching everyone move around. (I don’t much like all the noise at parties, and he’s a safe haven.) Hotch was not invited (neither was Rossi—“no grownups,” JJ said, and winked at me), and so Emily did a Hotch impersonation that was also really funny. (Emily doesn’t like Hotch. Not yet, anyway. Penelope tells her that Hotch is “rough around the edges, but an “acquired taste which is acquired by all,” because Penelope has nice things to say about everyone. Even me, if you can believe that.)_

_But most importantly, I was holding Henry, and I was thinking about how Derek and I are supposed to take him if something happens to JJ and Will._

_Because of this I was thinking about how deeply JJ trusts me again._

_How she forgave me._

_I was looking down at sleeping perfect angelic baby Henry thinking about how JJ thinks I am not the same person who got so dopesick that I left her alone on a dark road in the middle of a chase to shoot up,_

_and I was thinking about how she’s wrong._

* * *

Spencer finishes the Oxys on the night of the twenty-third. The last pill goes down as pleasantly as a spoonful of sour-salt, and he’s brimming with panic as he collapses into bed and curls into Derek’s chest.

_Now what?_

He spends the twenty-fourth in a haze, biting his nails, unsure of what to do with himself. 

_Now what?_

He feels lost.

He _is_ lost.

 _I_ **_am_ ** _lost._

Just as he’d known it would, the sleepy, buttery, erotic euphoria of the pills had quickly given way to that horrible animalistic _hunger_ deep in his belly—a _need_ for the stuff just to feel alright—and his hands begin to shake about twelve hours after his last dose. 

He’s sick again.

It’s a painful realization, and he cries as he stands in front of the mirror that morning and takes in the miserable sight of his hollow cheeks and unbrushed hair.

_I’m sick again._

_I ruined everything._

_I ruined everything, again._

* * *

It rains on the twenty-fourth. 

It’s a freezing, painful rain that melts the dirty snow lining the streets and hardens Spencer’s spirits, and it’s dark all day long.

 _It’s perfect weather for a funeral,_ Spencer thinks. 

He wishes he were dead. He wishes he’d just died in Tobias’ graveyard, and that he were rotting in a pine box right now. 

_It’d certainly be easier._

JJ greets everyone in the briefing room carrying packages wrapped in foil. 

“Lousy weather, huh?” She asks. 

Hotch makes a noncommittal noise, not bothering to greet her, and flips the front page of his file. 

“I like it,” Emily says, just as thunder sounds in the distance. (Spencer thinks absentmindedly that Emily Prentiss might just be accused of witchcraft, had she been born a few hundred years ago.) “It’s peaceful.”

“It’s nasty, is what it is.” JJ sets her foil packages and her bag down on the table. “I brought you guys zucchini bread! I figured we could all use some cheering up.”

There’s a collective bout of shouting and smiles. Penelope looks like she could weep for gratitude. 

Spencer sits silently in the middle of it all with his stomach turning, peeling his cuticles back. He tries not to cry as the thunder draws closer and Derek’s concerned glances in his direction grow more frequent until, finally, he fixes his eyes on Spencer with a clenched jaw and panicked, understanding eyes.

* * *

Derek finds the empty green pill container under Spencer’s corner of the mattress. 

It was stupid to hide it there. 

It was stupid to ever hide it at all, really—Derek knows Spencer’s mind and motivations better than he himself does. It’s not as if he wouldn’t find out. 

There are no secrets between the two of them that can be kept for any meaningful amount of time, because there’s no hard and fast line where one ends and the other begins. They’re two distinct and opposite halves of the same ridiculous, nonsensical whole. They speak a language of tics and tremors and glances that no one else could ever possibly understand, and, in this sense, Spencer has been all but _screaming_ for an intervention. 

He’s sitting in the living room with his feet tucked up on the couch, trying to tame his nausea with Alka Seltzer as he idly watches a documentary about tropical fish. He has no desire to learn about the ocean—not at the moment, anyway—but the soothing visuals lure him to the brink of sleep and drown out the harshness of the world above sea level.

Spencer is nearly asleep, and Derek hurls the little container at him from across the room.

It hits him square in the middle of the forehead. 

For a moment, Spencer lingers in the comfortable haze of almost-sleep and tropical fish, and he’s hurt and confused, but he recognizes the miserable green container before too long (at least, he thinks it’s before too long), and he freezes immediately in place.

“How long?” Derek demands, moving to stand over the couch. “Huh? _How long?_ ”

Spencer stares up at him and tries to form words. (It happens, sometimes, when he’s deeply upset, that his throat just seems to _jam,_ and he can’t produce any meaningful language.)

“You made a _promise,_ ” Derek snarls, clearly biting back tears. “You _promised_ me, Spencer, that you were gonna tell me _everything._ If there was any chance, if you felt like you were gonna relapse, you said you were gonna _tell me._ We fucking talked about this, you—you _promised me._ You promised me I could trust you. You fucking _lied to me._ ”

Spencer’s not a fighter. He never has been.

He’s often thought to himself that he would be the worst caveman in the world—he can’t take aggression in stride, and he can’t ever seem to produce it. He always shrinks back. Covers himself. Pulls his knees to his chest and cries.

( _Weak,_ Charles Hankel’s voice snaps at the back of his mind.)

“I’m _sorry,_ ” he sobs, tugging at his own hair with such a ferocity that his scalp goes numb. “I’m sorry, Der.”

“How many times are you gonna _apologize_ for this shit before you _change something?_ You’re _sorry?_ Are you fucking kidding me, Spencer? No, you’re fucking not, because if you were _sorry,_ you would _tell me_ when you relapsed, like you fuckin’ _promised me_ you would!”

Spencer swallows. He searches for words at the most desperate corners of his mind, but he finds nothing but tears and guilt.

“That’s the worst part of this,” Derek explains. “Not the...relapse. The _lying._ Breaking your promises and _lying to me._ You laid down next to me every night knowing full _fucking_ well that you...I _trusted_ you. I thought you were _trying_ to get better _._ I thought we were working together to get past this shit.” 

“I was trying,” Spencer whispers.

“Don’t. Don’t give me that. I can’t do this,” Derek says. “I can’t fucking do this again, I—I _can’t_ go back to living like this. You can’t do this to me again, Spencer. This is the fourth time. Jesus, this is never gonna end!” 

“It _will,_ ” Spencer promises. “I’m going to get help, I...I _promise_. I’m going to get better this time, I _promise_. And you don’t have to make me better. I’m doing it on my own. I won’t bother you. I won’t ask you for _anything._ ”

Laughing humorlessly, Derek throws his hands in the air, as if he’s crying out to God. “You _promise,_ huh? What am I supposed to make of that? You’ve made promises before. Fucking _hell._ And will you _quit—_ you’re not gonna _‘get better,’_ Spencer.”

Spencer’s blood runs cold. “ _What?_ Don’t say that.” 

No answer.

Spencer swallows a lump in his throat. “Don’t _say_ that,” he repeats, louder this time. “Why would you say that? I...I can still get better. I’m going to.” 

“No, you’re not. You’re not, because you’ve relapsed _four fucking times,_ and you—Jesus, Spencer, you lost your job for two _fucking_ months, you lost your friends, your _heart stopped,_ and you’re—you’re still not even _trying._ Lying and fucking— _stealing my meds_ and sneaking around. You’re not gonna get better, because you don’t _want_ to get better. You’re not trying. You’re not even doing the _minimum._ The _minimum._ ”

“Yes, I _am,_ ” Spencer insists. He wants to tell Derek about Hicks, about how he’s been _trying_ to talk the cravings out of his system, but he can’t form the words. “I _am._ I’m trying. I’m really really really _really_ trying, Der, I just...I’m sorry. I’m _sorry._ ” 

“Stop _apologizing_ if you’re not gonna—Jesus Christ, I can’t listen to this. I can’t—I can’t do this! I can’t do this again. I _can’t_ go back to this. I _can’t_ live like this anymore, Spencer!”

Spencer feels like he’s been hit in the gut. For just a moment, everything seems still around him. He can hardly make out the languid, peaceful movements of the technicolor fish eight feet from his face—his breathing stops. 

“Are you...are you leaving me?” He whispers, almost afraid to even expel the idea into the universe. If he speaks it, it becomes real.

Derek throws his hands up again. “You know what? I don’t know, Reid. I don’t know yet. I don’t _want_ to, but we’ll see, huh? Because right now, from where I’m standing, I’m looking at another—what? How long is this _shit_ gonna go on? Five years? Ten? Years and _years_ of this living fucking _Hell_ , and it just—it never fucking ends, and nothing ever changes! I can’t—I can’t fucking keep doing this.” 

Spencer chokes. “Don’t leave. Please? Wait, please don’t leave. I’m sorry. I’m so so _so_ sorry.”

Derek turns and leaves him alone and shell-shocked in the living room. 

He emerges later—Spencer is so woozy that he has no idea how _much_ later—with his shoes on and his jacket draped over his arm.

_No._

“I’m going to talk to Penelope,” Derek says. His voice is soft, now, and it’s worse than the shouting, because he sounds so utterly _defeated._ It’s deeply uncomfortable; it’s so unlike him. “I can’t be in this house with you right now.”

Spencer swallows. “Okay,” he whispers, brushing his tears away with the back of his hand. “Okay, I...please drive safely. I love you.”

Derek stares forlornly at Spencer and their dark, suddenly-dismal living room for a moment before shaking his head and stepping out into the snow.

He shuts the door behind him with a _thud_ that makes Spencer’s teeth clatter. 

On the television, the fish continue about their merry movement, and Spencer follows them once again to the edge of sleep, drowning in tears and snot and unable to think of anything but his drug.

* * *

He wakes up being gently laid in bed. 

The familiar scent of pine-ish musk envelops him like a hug from an old friend, and he blindly reaches up to wrap his arms around Derek’s strong shoulders.

“You came back,” he whispers. 

“I did,” Derek mumbles, kissing his sweaty forehead. “I can’t stay away from you for long.” 

_Addiction,_ Spencer thinks. _Am I an addiction?_

“Are you…going to stay?” 

Derek freezes mid-motion. “I don’t know yet,” he admits. “I’m sorry for yelling. I was...you’re _trying_ , aren’t you, baby boy? You _are_ trying to stay clean? I just…be honest with me. Can you do that? Be totally honest, Spencer. Are you _trying?_ ”

Spencer, unable to keep himself from crying at the sound of his nickname, nods and allows the tears to slip down his cheeks. “I am, I’m—” Shaky inhale. “I’m trying _so_ hard. I’m so sorry, Der. I’m just…I…hurt.”

“ _Hurt?_ ” There’s a note of worry in his voice. “You’re hurt? Why? Where?”

“ _Everywhere._ Everything hurts, I take painkillers because, you know, they—they essentially kill pain from just…from the brain, right, and it…it kills the pain. It kills my brain, it’s—I’m able to forget. The dopamine—”

“Shh,” Derek whispers. “I know, baby. I know. Go back to sleep, okay?”

Spencer grabs at his shirt. “But…?”

“I’ll be here when you wake up,” he promises.

For now, that’s enough.

* * *

Derek makes banana pancakes, and Spencer sits on the countertop opposite him, holding their breakfast recipe book and wearing a long-sleeved gray cotton shirt he’d pilfered off the top of Derek’s clean laundry pile. 

Spencer is unable to gracefully wear Derek’s clothes.

That’s never stopped him from taking them. 

The two of them are nearly exactly the same height, but they’re shaped about as differently as two people of the same height could be (Derek is beautifully, masterfully crafted into his height, as if he were carved from marble, and Spencer is built like Gumby), so Derek’s clothes always hang slightly off of Spencer’s skeletal torso and droop down to kiss his upper thighs. 

Despite the bitter reminder of his sickliness that knocks on the outside of his consciousness as he rolls Derek’s sleeves up his thin wrists, Spencer always likes wearing his clothes. 

He likes the way Derek’s smell lingers on the fabric. 

He likes the inherent safety of being loved. 

Most of all, he likes the mild antagonism. 

“Is this mine?” Derek asks, setting aside his spatula and moving between Spencer’s bare thighs to kiss him.

“No,” Spencer mumbles into his mouth. 

“You buy a lot of stuff in my size?”

“Mhm.”

“Mmm.”

Derek tastes like toothpaste and warmth, and Spencer wants to melt into his bones and stay there. The conflict of the previous night sits heavily over them (like a massive cloud on the edge of a downpour), but for just a moment, Spencer can pretend he doesn’t remember any of it.

For just a moment, pressed up against Derek as the dusty smell of the heat turning on fills the kitchen and the withdrawal tremors that shake his thighs subside, Spencer is at peace.

Derek breaks their contact and places his big, warm hands on Spencer’s waist.

Spencer (who is growing nervous) rhythmically knocks his heels against the cupboard at his feet and stares downward. The week-old remains of Penelope Garcia’s lilac nail polish still linger on his toes, he notices. _I should take that off,_ he thinks, though he doesn’t want to.

“Hey,” Derek says. “You with me?”

Spencer looks up into Derek’s tired, melancholy eyes. 

There are times when he can _really_ tell that Derek is older than he is.

He doesn’t like that look.

“Yes. What is it, _lyubimaya_ _?_ ” He whispers, wrapping his arms around his fiance’s neck.

“I’m sorry. I love you. You know that?”

Spencer swallows. “Of course I do. _I’m_ sorry.” 

“Right. You can be sorry you broke our promise, and I’ll be sorry for being an asshole. Okay?” 

“Okay.” Spencer mumbles, resting his forehead against Derek’s shoulder. 

Derek rubs slow, big circles onto his back. “I’m just scared,” he admits.

Spencer stiffens beneath his touch. 

Derek _hates_ being scared, and it’s no small feat for him to admit to it. There’s bravery inherent in his fear. 

“I’m scared for _you,_ ” Derek continues, gently petting Spencer’s hair. “That’s what makes this hard, you understand that? You keep this up and you’re in _danger,_ and I can’t do shit about it. All I ever want is to protect you, baby, but I can’t protect you from _this._ This is up to _you._ I can’t help you if you don’t meet me halfway.” 

Wrapping his arms tighter around Derek’s neck, Spencer nods. “I know.”

“Okay. So meet me there. _Please._ Be _honest_ with me from now on. No more lying. No secrets. Not about this, I mean. I can’t lose you. If I lose you, I lose part of _myself,_ you got that? I’m not giving up on you, but I’m _scared,_ and I need to know I can trust you.”

“You can trust me,” Spencer whispers, his voice breaking as he wraps his legs around Derek’s waist.

“I want to. I _really_ want to. _Please_ let me.”

Spencer isn’t sure how to answer, so he opts instead to stay nothing, and to let Derek’s warmth consume him.

* * *

Spencer wakes up on the couch at 11:47 AM.

There’s a note on the coffee table next to his half-eaten pile of now-cold banana pancakes, and the TV is blaring some obnoxious reality show about alligator wrestling. (Spencer has never understood Derek’s taste in media. Why would anyone want to wrestle alligators, anyway? Derek thinks it’s badass. Spencer thinks it’s foolish.)

Reluctant to leave the warmth of his throw blanket, Spencer slowly uncurls from himself and reaches for the slip of notebook paper.

_Spencer:_ it starts. 

His stomach churns. 

He’s not had good experiences with notes addressed to him left in empty houses.

Forcing down nausea, Spencer takes a deep breath and resumes reading.

_Spencer:_

_Went for groceries. Didn’t want to wake you up. You’re so pretty when you nap._

_Be back very soon. No matter what, I’ll always come back to you._

_I love you._

_Text me if you need anything at all._

_\- D_

Spencer sets the note down and stares out the window. 

He has an appointment with Hicks today, thank _God,_ but it’s not for another hour. 

For now, now that the weight of the entire world has been lifted off of his shoulders, he’ll rest.

* * *

**_1/25/07_**

_Derek and I fight very rarely._

_That’s why I’m so upset._

_He always complains about how I leave the cabinets open or spill sugar on the countertops, and I give him lip, but that isn’t fighting—it is foreplay at best (“what are you gonna do about it?” I ask him) and annoying at worst, and it’s something like a love language, now._

_But when we do fight, it’s usually my fault._

_One of the biggest fights we ever had was a month after Tobias._

_I deserved it._

_Ever since I was thirteen, I’ve spent my life orbiting vaguely around a man named Ethan. I try and try and try to put distance between us, but it never stays that way; I inevitably find my way back to him, as if the universe were expanding and contracting just to force me at him._

_I hate him, because he’s just like me. He’s like me if I weren’t such a coward; he’s the version of Spencer Reid who learned to bite back. (Is that better or worse than I am? Is it worse to be weak and submissive, or weak and aggressive?)_

_We’re bad people on our own, and we’re worse together. He brings out the worst in me. He scrapes the drudges of my soul and spits them in my face._

_I don’t like myself with him._

_That’s why I met with him in New Orleans._

_By that time, I had been using so long that I couldn’t quit on my own. I tried to skip a dose, because I was almost out of the Dilaudid and didn’t know where to get more, and I threw up on our bathroom floor._

_Derek rubbed my back and whispered, “oh, my poor baby. You alright?” in my ear and that was when I knew I had to leave him._

_I had to leave him, I had to leave the FBI. I didn’t deserve any of it, and they didn’t deserve what I was about to put them through._

_I almost did._

_I swear to God._

_I was almost strong enough to walk away._

_I was in that jazz bar with him, with Ethan, and he had his hand on the inside of my thigh and he was telling me we could be so happy if I stayed with him._

_“I could help you get clean,” he said. “Stay here with me. Come home with me tonight. We could be_ **_young_ ** _again. Just like we were.” (It was funny because I was 25 and he was 27. Both of us grew up and got old much too fast, I think.) “I’ve wanted you so bad for so fucking long. Nobody does it like you.”_

_I almost let him take me home. Almost, but not quite._

_Because I didn’t want him anymore._

_I didn’t want to reap what I had sown._

_All I wanted was Derek. I just wanted him, and I wanted to go home._

_I went back to DC with the team the next day._

_Derek asked me if I was with Ethan, and if he fucked me._

_I told him the truth - yes, I was, and no, he didn’t._

_I told him the truth last time we fought, and look where that landed me. Look where I am._

_If I stayed in New Orleans, would I be clean? Would I be dead? Would I be anything but this? God,_ **_anything_ ** _but this?_

* * *

“Recording,” Dr. Hicks says. 

“Okay. My name is Dr. Spencer Reid. Today’s date is...January twenty-fifth. I have something serious I need to talk about today. Um, I ruined my clean streak.” 

Hick’s jaw tightens. “You relapsed.”

“Yes. I was having nightmares, and I wanted to...yes.”

“This is your fourth relapse, Spencer,” Hicks says. 

He sounds _furious,_ and Spencer shrinks back in his seat. He bites at the inside of his cheek.

“I know,” he whispers, ashamed of himself.

“You’re not making progress,” Hicks hisses, leaning forward as if to threaten him. “You’re _not_ making progress, Spencer! _Look_ at you, you’re...you’re not any better than you were!”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Hicks swallows and collapses back in his chair. “Okay,” he mutters. “It’s okay. It’s okay. We can fix you, still. Have you considered a more intensive form of treatment?” He asks, his voice shaking, leaning forward once again to stare Spencer down. He’s trembling, and his face seems to grow redder by the moment.

Spencer swallows, his palms sweating under his doctor’s intense gaze. “No. But…I’m not opposed, if you think it’s necessary. Um…what did you…have in mind?”

The light catches Hicks’ golden cross necklace, and Spencer gets a sudden twinge of deep, nauseating unease. 

At least, he thinks he does - it could just be the withdrawal.

“It’s patient-oriented,” Hicks whispers, placing a hand on Spencer’s knee and digging his nails into his slacks. “The program is catered just to you.”


	4. Panic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Questionable claims and terror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!! So sorry it's been so long since I last updated this. I know that's what I said last time, too. I'm the worst. Sorry, haha. I think this is the chapter where it kinda really picks up, so hopefully this will be exciting from here on out! Thanks for reading!!

**_pan·ic_ **

**_/ˈpanik/_**

**_noun_ **

_sudden uncontrollable fear or anxiety, often causing wildly unthinking behavior._

**10/04/06**

_Dear Spencer,_

**_Happy anniversary!!_ **

_I love you so much, bug!!_

_I can’t believe it’s already been four years. At the same time, I can’t believe it’s_ **_only_ ** _been four years. Time flies when you’re having fun, but I feel like I’ve known you my whole entire life and long before that, too._

_You really are my better half, Spence. You complete me. You make me a better man. With you, I’m happier, more patient, and so much more in touch. I don’t even want to imagine where I’d be without you._

_I’m_ **_so_ ** _proud of you for everything you’ve overcome. You’ve never had it easy, especially since Hankel, and I’m so proud of how hard you’ve been working to stay clean these past few months._

_I know you’re frustrated about marriage, and I am, too. I’m really sorry that another year has passed without any progress. But it will happen eventually. I promise. Someday, hopefully sooner than later, I’ll be able to introduce you to everybody as my husband. I can’t wait._

_Here’s to many more._

_Love you forever._

_\- D_

* * *

**_01/25/07_**

The house is quiet, warm, and still when Derek returns from the grocery store. 

Spencer’s disappeared, leaving the cabinets and dishwasher ajar in his wake. Derek rolls his eyes, bubbling with affection, and closes them. 

Spencer has also flung sugar across the countertop, which is sort of odd—he’s plenty messy, but he’s not _sloppy,_ and he doesn’t like granulated textures on his fingers and palms, so it’s uncharacteristic that he’d leave something like sugar or salt tossed about in a place where he could so easily brush up against it. 

_Withdrawal,_ Derek remembers, absentmindedly sweeping the sugar into his palm and tossing it into the sink. _He must not be thinking._

“I’m back,” he shouts, vaguely hurling his words in the direction of the staircase as he sets the grocery bags down on the kitchen table. “I got your stuff, baby.” 

No answer.

There was a recipe for a crusted herbal sourdough bread that Spencer had been looking forward to trying for a few weeks now, but neither of them had yet had the sense to buy the necessary ingredients. 

Spencer loves making bread, and Derek loves to watch him do it— he’s always enjoyed leaning up against the kitchen counter and watching as Spencer’s long, delicate fingers methodically worked through his lumps of dough. 

Spencer is just so full of unused energy that he nearly seems to vibrate sometimes. Derek often imagines electricity radiating off of the tips of his fingers, as if he were stroking a plasma ball. Kneading is a release of the tension—like a stim, almost—and Derek could swear, at times, that he can see sparks fly from Spencer’s hands into the dough. 

Sparks or no sparks, he and Spencer are at the height of their domesticity in the kitchen. It’s a safe haven, especially at this time of year, when it’s always so cold and dark outside and so warm and pleasant here, leaning up against the counter in the buttery light with a loving hand on the back of Spencer’s neck.

The bread supplies are a peace offering; a band-aid, of sorts.

Derek’s not great at heart-to-hearts, and Spencer is _abysmal_ at them, so he hopes that his lover will be able to read between the lines. 

_I love you,_ he’d thought to himself earlier as he dropped a bottle of dried rosemary into his cart beneath a humming, twitching fluorescent bulb, so restless that it evoked Spencer’s hands.

_I love you, and I want to stay with you in our kitchen. In our house and in our life. It belongs to both of us. I want to watch you make sourdough loaves for as long as I live._

There was an unwelcome chill radiating off of a nearby meat display.

 _Spencer doesn’t eat meat,_ Derek thought, irrationally and automatically, because Spencer is as much a part of his consciousness as he himself is.

_Bound together._

Olive oil and coarse Kosher salt. A growing sense of unease.

_You’re my destiny._

Derek can’t say any of this, so he doesn’t—he buys the rosemary, and the olive oil, and he hopes it will do the talking for him. 

“The chives and garlic and...shit,” he clarifies, leaning into the stairwell. “That’s what you wanted, yeah?” 

No answer.

Derek swallows and tries to exhale his anxiety. 

The last time he’d come home from an errand and been unable to find Spencer in the house, it hadn’t ended well. 

_Choking, spasming, a needle sticking out of his arm, a sudden, blood-curdling stillness—_

_No._

_Think._

Spencer had been asleep on the couch when Derek left. He could just be sleeping upstairs—that would explain the silence.

_Right?_

* * *

Their bed is empty. 

Empty, cold, and neatly made, just the way Derek had left it, and there’s no trace of Spencer anywhere. 

By the looks of it, his love hadn’t been back between the sheets since the two of them had been in the kitchen earlier that morning. 

“Spence?” Derek calls, his heart hammering in his ears. “Hey, babe?” 

The bathroom door is closed. 

_No._

Derek is suddenly bowled over by the panic he’d stifled downstairs, and it hits him so suddenly that the space between his ribs aches as if he’d been punched—a slew of putrid memories he’s been desperately trying to forget. 

_Spencer’s dark curls spread out like tentacles across the white bathroom tiles, his mouth full of the contents of his stomach, Spencer with a needle sticking halfway out of his arm, Spencer dying, being dead, his young heart still beneath Derek’s trembling fingers, “nonono, I love you so much, no, I can’t…”_

Without thinking, Derek knocks the bathroom door open with the sole of his boot. He bursts into the cold, sterile room, swallowing acid at the back of his throat in anticipation of a brutal rehashing of his worst nightmare. 

_I love you so much._

_No._

_I can’t._

* * *

The bathroom is as empty as the bed. 

Derek leans back against the bathroom sink, laughs dryly, and shakes his head. 

_Stupid,_ he thinks. 

_Busted the fucking latch._

_Wasn’t even locked._

He bitterly slams the door shut, cringing at the way it rattles in its frame without a latch, and sits down hard on the cold, empty bed. 

If he _were_ to leave Spencer, how would he do it? 

_How the fuck would I manage that?_

They’re not married, of course—they _can’t_ be, not until the law catches up—so it’s not as if he could just have a lawyer split their life in two and send them on their separate ways. 

Derek could kick Spencer out tomorrow and take _everything,_ and nothing could be done to stop him. Nothing _would_ be done, because Spencer wouldn’t do anything. He’s never been the sort to push back—he’d look at Derek with his big, wet, heartbroken eyes, and he’d swallow and press his perfect lips together and say nothing. 

But Derek would never do that, of course—he couldn’t. He couldn’t just remove Spencer from his life. 

_From himself._

They’ve become woven so tightly together that Derek is never quite sure what parts of him are his own and what parts are borrowed from Spencer. It’d be like taking out his left lung and lying it down on the street. 

Derek and Spencer have been together a little more than four years and cohabiting for three. This is Derek’s house by law, but in practice, it belongs just as much to Spencer as it does to him. The bed that he now sits upon, leafing anxiously through a journal Spencer had kept in 2005, will forever be theirs, even if Spencer never sleeps in it again. 

Even if Spencer Reid were to leave this house and never set foot inside again, this will never just be _Derek’s bed—_ this will always be the place where Derek made love to him for the first time, the place where Spencer had laid on his stomach and watched Derek install IKEA bookshelves in the corner of the room, and the place they’d first talked about marriage. ( _“Someday, you know,”_ Derek said, tucking a stray curl behind his ear. 

_“You mean that?”_ Spencer asked, like he didn’t believe it. _“You would really want to marry me?”_ )

Derek sets Spencer’s journal down and fishes his cell phone out of his pocket. 

* * *

**_2:54 PM_ **

_— > remember when i accidentally proposed to you? lmao. love u so much babyboy. please never doubt that, i know im not perfect but ive never not loved u with my whole heart. from the moment i saw u i knew it was u _

* * *

**_3:36 PM_ **

_— > u coming back soon? im kinda worried about u, let me know _

_— > I wanna talk treatment tonight. i think rehab, then mb a therapist. talking helps me and it might help u. u never talked to a professional abt anything that happened with hankel and i really think u should _

_— > but we can work it out ofcourse. wanna hear ur ideas too. love u my pumpkin _

* * *

**_4:02 PM_ **

_— > spencer can u answer ur phone please ur worrying me _

* * *

**_5:18 PM_ **

_— > i just talked to the girls, wanted to see if you were with them, and none of them have heard from u. I’m scared ur using or something where are u _

* * *

**_5:26 PM_ **

_— > if ur mad at me or u wanna be alone a while that’s fine but please just answer ur phone you’re scaring me a whole fucking lot _

* * *

**_6:08 PM_ **

_— > Spencer it’s getting dark where the fuck are you?? It’s been hours, if ur okay please answer me _

_— > Please _

_— > I just need to know ur ok. Just say that ur ok and I’ll leave you alone until you’re ready to talk _

_— > Spencer _

* * *

**_6:12 PM_ **

**_— > _ ** _this shit is exactly why I was angry when I found out you relapsed. I can’t keep doing this. This is fucking unacceptable Spencer you can’t do this to me im fucking freaking out I don’t deserve this_

_— > I know you’re using IV I know the pills are gone _

_— > come home now I can’t do this anymore we need to talk _

_— > Spencer I’m so serious _

* * *

Derek calls Penelope before he calls the police. 

He watches the watery, washed-out winter sunset out their front window, pacing back and forth across the rug as he calls Spencer’s cell over and over and _over_ again, waiting anxiously for the sound of his voice. 

When he starts getting sent to voicemail, he calls Penelope Garcia with shaking fingers and a numbness in his mouth.

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck._

_I love you so much, no, I can’t._

Penelope picks up on the first ring.

 _“You alone?”_ She purrs in Derek’s left ear, oblivious to the fact that the ground is slowly crumbling out from underneath Derek’s feet. 

A joke—it’s all a joke. Derek can’t bring himself to joke.

“Not _now,”_ he snaps. “I need help.”

He can hear a rustle as Penelope straightens out on the other end. 

She’s so good; Derek has never quite understood how she can be _so_ unfailingly good. Good inside and out, sweet through and through like a Tootsie Pop— _that’s my girl._

 _“What’s wrong? Are you guys alright?”_ She asks.

“I’m okay,” Derek says. “Hey, listen, I can’t find Spencer. He’s not at home, not answering his phone.”

_“...What do you mean? He’s a big boy. I know he’s...struggling, but you shouldn’t be tracking him, it’s not—”_

“I haven’t seen him in four hours,” Derek interrupts. “He didn’t tell me where he went. I can’t get a hold of him. Look, baby, normally I wouldn’t ask for this, but remember how...I just...I don’t wanna find him under some fuckin’ overpass, Pen. _Please.”_

Penelope hesitates, then exhales shakily. “ _Right. Okay. Let me grab my miracle machine.”_

“What?”

_“My laptop?”_

“Okay. Whatever, just—just... _hurry,”_ he snaps. 

Derek _hates_ snapping at Penelope. 

In all of their years working together, it’s only happened a small handful of times (Penelope is far more prone to snappage than Derek is), but the guilt that inevitably follows each occasion is nearly suffocating nonetheless. 

Penelope is sweet, inside and out like a Tootsie Pop, and sometimes, their job calls for something far more _bitter._ Derek is well aware that Penelope is familiar with bitterness (the woman walked through Hell and came out the other side with her hair accessories still intact), but he wants to shield it from her nonetheless. He likes to be a sanctuary in the midst of all of their bitterness, not another obstacle.

 _“Okay,”_ Penelope says. _“I need the number.”_

Derek recites it for her, and she clicks around on the other end of the line for a moment. (Derek wonders absently if he’s somehow become classically conditioned—the invigorating sound of Penelope Garcia rapidly smacking her bedazzled fingers against a keyboard on the other end of a phone call is a promise of impending good news, and Derek feels something close to a Dopamine rush.) 

Her fingers still, and Derek’s mouth runs dry.

“Anything?”

 _“His phone is off,”_ Penelope whispers after a beat of silence. _“Derek, I’m so sorry. I can’t -”_

“What? What do you mean? Is—you can’t track it?”

_“No. I...I can’t. Derek...”_

She’s crying.

Derek hates when she cries. 

Tears break his heart, and Spencer and Penelope will _both_ cry at _anything,_ and it’s a bit much to handle at times.

Derek absentmindedly smacks the side of his fist against the drywall (looking for something to ground himself with) and attempts to level his breathing. 

“Okay. Fuck. Alright. Hey.” He runs a shaking hand across his brow. He’s speaking with his trademark calming, authoritative tone, and he’s not quite sure if he’s trying to soothe Penelope or himself. “ _Hey._ I’m gonna talk to the cops, okay? Thanks for your help, baby girl. I’m serious.”

 _“I can leave it up,”_ Penelope whimpers. _“I can—if he turns it back on…”_

“That’d be great,” Derek answers, swallowing bile. “Give me a call.”

He doesn’t tell Penelope that he’s not sure the man they’re looking for is coherent or awake or _alive_ enough to turn on a cell phone—he doesn’t want to add to the bitterness.

* * *

Pushing cops around is not Derek’s favorite thing to do.

Emily Prentiss thinks it’s funny, but Derek, who was once a cop being knocked around by the feds, always feels authoritarian and disrespectful pulling his fed card, and he limits it to situations of absolute necessity.

This, of course, is a situation of absolute necessity.

Derek walks into their municipal police station, nearly in tears and trembling, and he tells the woman attending the desk that he wants to put a search out for a colleague who went missing earlier that day. 

“You want to report a co-worker missing,” she demands, staring up at him with a furrowed brow, “and the last time you saw him was...five hours ago? And you’re doing this because he’s not answering your texts? You need to wait twenty-four hours, sir.”

So, naturally, Derek pulls out his badge and slams it on the table right in front of her bony, manicured hands, and he tells her that he’s _special agent Derek Morgan of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit,_ and he wants the streets combed for a six-foot-tall, twenty-six year old Caucasian man of slim build _now, dammit._

And Jesus _Christ,_ he’d given his rank and his unit and _everything,_ and if _Hotch_ finds out about this— 

_it doesn’t matter._

Nothing matters except for Spencer.

Nothing ever has.

_Olive oil, coarse Kosher salt, you’re my destiny._

If Derek loses his job, and he can _never_ work for the Bureau again on account of his dire misconduct and abuse of power, and he leaves this police precinct with Spencer Reid alive and on his arm, he’ll be perfectly content for as long as he lives. 

He sits in a chair in the corner of the lobby with his shoulder blades splayed, trying _desperately_ to come off as intimidating and authoritative with tears in his eyes and shaking fingers.

In childhood, Derek had always neglected his nighttime prayers.

He would go weeks without praying, and when the mood struck him, he would squeeze his eyes shut and greet God as though He were a friend that Derek hadn’t spoken to for some time.

Slowly, he closes his eyes, buries his face in his hands, and tries to remember the _it’s-been-a-while_ prayer.

_Hi, God._

_I need a favor._

_If you do just one thing for me,_

_I will never_

_ask for anything_

_ever again._

* * *

Spencer calls Derek after two hours of empty searching.

It feels miraculous.

It feels like a resurrection.

_Thank you, thank you._

_I will never ask for anything, ever again._

Derek answers the phone feeling so nauseous he can hardly speak. 

_“Derek?”_ Spencer whispers.

It opens some sort of floodgate, and Derek is crying before he can stop himself.

“Oh, my God. Thank _God._ Don’t fucking do that,” Derek snaps, furiously wiping tears from his cheeks. “What the hell? What the _hell,_ Spencer? I went to the fucking _cops,_ I have people looking for you, I...where the _fuck_ are you?”

“ _I’m sorry,_ ” Spencer whispers again, with a sort of whimper to his voice, as if he were horribly, _deathly_ afraid. _“I’m so sorry.”_

(When Derek looks back on the call later, he realizes that he should have noticed then that something was wrong. Spencer isn’t scared of him. He never has been.)

“Quit fucking _apologizing._ Good fucking _God,_ Spencer, quit it. I am so sick of hearing you _apologize._ Where are you? I’m coming to pick you up right now. You’re coming home, and...and first thing tomorrow, we’re talking about rehab.” 

Spencer whimpers. “ _No. N...no._ ” 

“ _No?_ What do you _mean,_ no _?_ ”

There’s a static sound on the other end that Derek can’t quite make out, but he thinks Spencer is crying. _Sobbing._ Big, breathy sobs, the sort that give a person hiccups. 

“What’s wrong?” Derek demands. “Are you hurt?” 

“ _No. I’m—”_ choking sob. “ _I’m in...rehab. Now.”_

Derek’s heart sinks.

He remembers the previous night in their living room, standing over Spencer while he cried and pleaded for a chance to make it better. 

_“Please don’t leave me!_

_“I’ll do it on my own!”_

_I won’t ask you for anything! Ever again!_

_“Why?”_ Derek whispers. “I—baby, I didn’t...you didn’t tell me. Why didn’t you tell me? Where are you? Can I come see you? Spencer, you...how long are you gonna be there? Is it a 60 or 90 day?”

Spencer keeps crying those horrible, deep, chest-y sobs, and Derek could _swear_ it physically hurts him. _“No. No, no! I—goodbye. Goodbye. I...I love you. I love you so much. I’m so stupid, I...I’m so sorry. I love you.”_

Derek straightens out in his chair. “Hey. No. I love you, too. You’re not _stupid._ You’re just _sick,_ okay? And you’re gonna get your medicine now, right? Good stuff, huh? Just tell me where you are, baby. I can come by and drop off some stuff for you. You want your blanket?” 

Spencer hangs up without answering, and Derek is left brutally alone in the middle of the cold, yellowing precinct lobby, trying to choke down a lump in his throat.

* * *

The idea that Spencer doesn’t want to speak to him is painful, but Derek respects it.

He _tries_ to, at least, but he eats dinner alone, staring at Spencer’s empty place across the table and thinking about his poor, sweet boy, all alone in a facility, utterly terrified and crying those deep, hiccuping, haunting sobs, and he calls him anyway.

_Voicemail._

_Hi, this is Dr. Spencer Reid. I...can’t take your call right now, but, uh...leave...sorry. Leave your message, and I will. Will take your call, I mean. Bye._

“Hey,” Derek says, biting at the inside of his cheek. “Uh...I’m really sorry I yelled at you earlier. Babe, I...had no idea you were checking in. I’m sorry for what I said yesterday, about…you not trying. ‘Cos I can see that you’re trying real hard, and you _have_ been, and...I’m really proud, okay?”

Derek wipes his forehead with the back of his hand and tries not to cry again. “Uh...this _really_ wasn’t what I wanted,” he continues. “I didn’t want you to check in by yourself without telling me. If that’s what you think, you’re off. I wanna come visit you, okay? I wanna talk to you. 

Can you call me back when...if you get this? I dunno what their phone policies are where you are. 

….Jesus, I don’t know where you _are,_ Spencer. I don’t know if they’re treating you okay, or what. Please call me, or, just...have your facility call me, even? I don’t want you to do this alone. I know you think that’s what I want. I know you think I’m sick of you, and you’re trying to prove something to me. You’re _wrong,_ you hear me? I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere.

It’s okay to mess up. It’s okay to need a little extra help. You’re on the right track, and you’re trying, and that’s what counts, okay?” 

He’s crying again.

_Shit._

“So...just call me back, baby, okay? Tell me where you are and what you need and I’ll bring it over to you. I noticed you didn’t pack a bag or anything, and I know you probably want your blankets, so…yeah. Call me when you can. I _love_ you. Bye.”

* * *

Derek falls asleep curled on his side, staring at the empty, Spencer-shaped space in their bed. 

The last time he’d left Spencer at rehab, it was weeks in the works. Last time, it was a decision they made together, when it had all just become entirely _too much_ and they both knew that there was nowhere left to turn.

They’d packed Spencer’s things together (enough to last him _two months_ —the longest they’d ever been apart), and the night before he checked in, Spencer sat on the edge of their bed for hours, huddled into Derek’s side and staring miserably at his bags. 

“This is gonna be good,” Derek mumbled, kissing his hollow, sunken cheek. “Okay? Fresh start.”

Spencer nodded. “I just...I feel like I miss you already.”

He dropped that little whimper into his voice (the whispery sort that always breaks Derek’s heart), and Derek pulled Spencer into his lap, where he and his long, swannish limbs always seemed to somehow fit perfectly.

“Well, don’t. Hey.” Derek gently grabbed Spencer’s downturned chin and tilted his gaze toward himself. “Look at me. _Don’t,_ okay? I’m gonna visit you _every_ week. Both visiting days. Tuesdays, Thursdays—and I’ll find a way in on Saturdays, too, if you want.”

That got him a smile—a _real_ smile, that beautiful, hesitant, genuine smile, which, in those dark and miserable days, Derek didn’t see _nearly_ as often as he liked.

They’d both been so _optimistic_ that night, in a strange, terrified way.

Derek remembers fucking him on his back (holding his hands, staring directly into his dark, tearful eyes, kissing the discolored track marks running up and down the lengths of his emaciated forearms), just as he had their very first night together. 

It was an act of _hope._

They were going to be okay—it was going to be okay again. In just a few months, they would begin to heal. Their wounds would scar over, and they would be _whole_ again. 

As Derek stares at Spencer’s pillow, he wonders what had gone so horribly _wrong_ in the past year.

Everything was going so _well._

They were both so _happy._ They were happy alone (each of them living their little internal lives as little half-people), and they were happy together (at their best). They were happier and more hopeful than they’d ever been, or, at the least, happier than they’d been since Hankel.

How had it all gone so wrong so _fast?_

What had happened in the last month that had ruined every shred of their hard-earned progress?

What had happened in the last month that had ruined every shred of _them?_

Even last year, even at his worst and most selfish and most blindly, hopelessly dopesick, Spencer had _trusted_ Derek. He trusted him with the truth. He trusted him to take care of him- to drive him to his clinic, to help him pack, to visit him…

_What the fuck happened?_

* * *

Penelope calls him in the middle of the night.

Derek is hardly awake when he answers the phone, and he doesn’t process much of what she’s saying.

_When the phone turned back on…_

_…..tower four hours away._

_...weird?_

_What is he doing…?_

_You with me, Derek?_

But he’s not with her, and it means nothing,

and he falls back asleep with his face buried in Spencer’s pillow, trying to draw out a bit of his lavender scent.

* * *

**_01/25/07_**

_I’ve made a mistake._

_This is not a hospital._

_I am not going to heal here._

_I want to go home._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment if you enjoyed this!!! Love you so much, thanks for reading and for your patience!


	5. Distress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh No!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I said I was going to update more often and I'm sticking to that ;) but consequently, the chapters are going to be a little shorter from now on.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

**_dis·tress_ **

**_/dəˈstres/_ **

**_noun_**

_extreme anxiety, sorrow, or pain._

* * *

_Spencer is in bed next to him, with abscesses on his arms and sickening dark circles beneath his eyes._

_“Your skin is cold,” Derek says, as he reaches out to tuck a matted curl behind Spencer’s ear and his knuckles brush his lover’s cheek._

_“Of course it is,” Spencer answers. “I haven’t been warm for such a long time.”_

_“Let me hold you,” Derek begs. “I could make you warm again.”_

_“You can’t make me warm. Nothing can make me warm.”_

_“Don’t say that.”_

_His sores have begun to drool onto the white sheets. There’s a wound in the middle of his stomach that wasn’t there a moment ago that now bleeds profusely._

_He is humiliated, but not in pain._

_“Oh, God,” he says, his voice warbling as if he were under water. “Look what I did. Look what I did to your clean, beautiful bed. Oh, no. I’m filthy. Bound for Hell. I’m so sorry about your bed. I’m so filthy.”_

_Derek tries to sit up, but something keeps him on his side. “You need to go to the hospital,” he says. “We have to get you to the hospital!”_

_“The_ **_bed._ ** _”_

_“It’s okay. I can buy a new bed. Just let me sit up. I want to call 9-1-1.”_

_But by the time he’s finished speaking, Spencer is gone, and the room has gone dark._

* * *

Driving to work alone on Monday makes Derek utterly miserable.

Commuting alone is always _worse,_ of course, because Spencer makes everything sweeter and less painful, but driving to work without Spencer because he’s at home with a temperature is significantly less unpleasant than driving to work without Spencer because Spencer is sick and terrified and alone in a mystery facility hours away.

There’s something about sitting next to an empty, cold space for an hour and a half while its occupant is God-knows-where that makes Derek nauseous. Even as many times as he’s asked Spencer to _please sit still, I can’t watch the road when you’re moving around like that,_ he finds the unusual nothingness far more distracting, and he works himself into such an intense spiral of dread that he nearly rear-ends a man in an old Ford.

“Sorry,” Derek mumbles out loud, though he knows that no one can hear him.

It’s something only Spencer would do, and Derek finds himself wondering (for the hundredth time that week) just how much they’ve borrowed from each other, and what would happen to each of them if they were to part ways forever.

* * *

Besides an occasional staff rotation or routine cleaning, nothing beyond the glass doors of the BAU ever seems any different than the day Derek arrived.

When he’d first walked in here eight years ago with his head held high, his chest puffed out, and his fingers stuffed in his jacket pockets to conceal their fearful trembling, he was met with the same dingy white linoleum and smell of printer ink that greet him today.

Today, his hands tremble for a different reason, but nothing else seems too terribly changed. 

Prentiss is showing Garcia a new tattoo on her bicep. She clearly thinks that Hotch can’t see her from where she’s huddled up beside a filing cabinet, outside of the line of vision of his office chair, but he can, as he’s nowhere near said chair - he stands at the top of the staircase with his arms folded, scowling down at the two women with amusement. (Derek has known Aaron Hotchner long enough to recognize an _amused scowl_ when he sees one.) There’s a trainee talking quietly on the phone in the break room, covering her mouth to hide a smile, and Derek wonders what’s going on, and whether this is an authorized break from filing papers. 

Derek _loves_ being in the field, where he can do what gets his heart pumping and his brain flowing (and, furthermore, what he knows would make his father proud), but sometimes, the monotony of a normal office day is the best medicine. He’s not as young as he used to be, after all.

He sits down in his creaky office chair, listens to Emily and Penelope to the best of his ability, and tries not to dwell too heavily on Spencer’s absence from the seat next to him as he starts on filing.

God, he _tries -_ he really does.

* * *

They circle up in the briefing room at 10:06. (They’re late because Rossi can’t find his stupid little notebook. Rossi “doesn’t really consider” Hotch his boss, never mind that he _is,_ and he has a tendency to come and go as he pleases.) 

“Okay, uh. I don’t want to start without Reid,” JJ says, standing up in front of the projection board and shifting from foot to foot. “He’s gonna be a big help with this one, I think. We’ve got some cyphers. Morgan, is…?”

Rossi raises an eyebrow.

Technically, Derek and Spencer are not supposed to live together. It’s not exactly a secret, but they try to keep it under wraps at work. It hurts—Derek is _proud_ that Spencer is his, and he doesn’t like having to stifle it as if it’s some kind of dirty secret. They’ve spent too much of their lives in shame and fear. 

“He’s on medical leave,” Derek says, straightening out in his chair. “Don’t wait up. You said this was in Michigan?”

“Yes. There’s—”

“One second, JJ. I wasn’t aware that Reid needed leave,” Hotch interrupts. “He knows he’s supposed to run leave requests by me. How long is he planning on being out?” 

Derek freezes.

Spencer doesn’t exactly take his job lightly. If Derek let him, he’d be perfectly content to live at the office. The fact that he hasn’t notified the Bureau of an impending two-month absence is _worryingly_ out of character. 

“Sixty days?” Derek offers, trying to soothe his panic. _He just forgot. He’s just stressed._ “Ninety? I’m...not quite sure.”

“Alright. I need him to send the Bureau an official request for that,” Hotch says. “I can’t have him out that long unexcused. We can provide the leave if he has a doctor’s notice, but let him know that I need him to call my office when he gets the chance.”

The rest of the team keep talking - exit wounds, blunt objects, and obsession - but Derek can’t make himself hear them. 

_Something’s wrong._

Spencer has never been this scattered. 

The cupboards, the layer of sugar on the countertop, the no-call-no-show—he’s not thinking. 

Spencer is _always_ thinking, and when he’s thought all there is to think, he doubles back over and _overthinks._ He’s never been so thoughtless in all the years Derek has known him.

 _Never,_ never ever. Not high, not detoxing, not even as he was dying at Tobias Hankel’s cracked, calloused hands. 

_Something is_ **_wrong._ **

Derek isn’t sure _what,_ but _something_ is horribly, deeply, sickeningly wrong with this picture.

* * *

He receives the email at 2:54 PM.

 **REHABILITATION REPORT: SPENCER W. REID,** the subject line reads. 

The sender’s address is a series of numbers and Cyrillic characters.

There’s a five minute video attached and no body text.

In the thumbnail image, Spencer— _his_ Spencer—is sitting behind a thick, wooden desk in a white-walled, tile-floored room, wearing some sort of stained white hospital gown.

“What the _fuck?”_ Derek mutters. 

He clicks the attachment immediately, as hard as he can, three or four or maybe even five times. (He _knows_ this won’t speed up the process, but his extremities are nearly _numb_ with terror, and he has to take it out _somehow.)_ He bounces his leg beneath his desk—this, too, is borrowed from Spencer—as he waits for the file to download.

_Come on._

_Come on._

_Downloading media attachments from suspicious strangers?_

_Sorry, Penelope. I had to._

_Come on._

_Fuck._

_Comeon comeon._

After what feels like an eternity, he’s at last able to open the attachment. 

He slips his headphones on and braces himself.

* * *

Spencer is looking directly into the camera, and his entire body is shaking.

His face is slick with sweat. 

His nose is running, and his eyes are red, as if he’d been crying.

Whatever detox is happening over there is _brutal,_ (nothing like the gentle methadone weaning they’d given Spencer at his last facility) and Derek is immediately overcome with guilt upon seeing his baby’s terrified face. 

Derek wants to pick him up. He wants to take him home. 

_This isn’t right._

The room Spencer sits in is _dirty._

His gown is dirty, and his hair is unwashed. 

He’s sick and scared and in pain. 

God, he’d be much better off just detoxing in their bedroom - Derek could take far better care of him than _this._

_This isn’t right, this is not fucking right._

Spencer speaks with the raw, crackling voice of a person who had just been screaming. 

_“Hi,”_ he starts. _“My name is Spencer. Um, Spencer Willaim Reid. I’m twenty-six. I work for…?”_

He looks up, just above the camera, as if to speak to whoever is filming. 

The fear in his big, dark eyes makes Derek’s skin crawl. Seeing Spencer so afraid and upset provokes something _viscerally_ uneasy in him—it always has.

_“I have to say this part?_

_…Okay. I work for the government. The FBI._

_And, um, I’ve been hiding something, yes._

_…And I’m a heroin addict._

_That’s not what…that’s not what I’ve been trying to hide, though. That’s not a secret. Uh, most people know that…about me.”_

Spencer brushes his tears away and laughs humorlessly. 

His bottom lip trembles as he drums his fingers against the desk. 

Derek wants so badly to kiss him. Rub soothing circles onto his back and wash that grease out of his hair. 

_Soon,_ he thinks.

Penelope can find out where this awful video came from, and Derek will have his baby home by dinner time.

 _“That’s the only thing a lot of people know about me,”_ Spencer continues, _“which—I hate that, I_ **_hate_ ** _it, but I did it to myself._

_It used to be, you know, uh, Reid The Genius, or, Reid, The Human Encyclopedia, or…Reid, My Friend, or something, and now, it’s—it’s just Reid The Junkie. That’s all I am._

_I don’t like that word._

_...Why? Um…well, it...just hurts. You feel discarded. My superior, um, who I really looked up to, he...he called me that a few times, and...”_

The pained little laugh Spencer lets out before he speaks again is hoarse and soaked in tears. Derek can feel it grating against his eardrums.

_“He had high hopes for me. He made all kinds of exceptions to let me on the team, and I’m just...so sorry to disappoint him.”_

Spencer taps his fingers again. 

_Nervous stim,_ Derek thinks.

_He’s scared._

_“I’ve been hiding that…that I’m trying to stop now. I don’t like talking about this much, because I’ve tried to stop before and…and not been able to._

_Everyone is so disappointed in me. I’m not the person I was, but I want to be what I was again. I can become that for them, and then maybe—_

_But I’d be surprised if they still want me._

_It’s harder than people think. After prolonged heroin use, a person’s brain loses the ability to normally produce dopamine without the drug, and I…I always miss it. I feel like I’ll never be happy again._

_But I’m trying to stop. And this—today—”_

Spencer looks into the camera and forces a thoroughly unconvincing smile (he’s still _crying,_ for God’s sake) as he frantically raps his fingers against the woodgrain. 

_“This is a brand new start for me,”_ he whispers. _“I’m ch…”_ His voice breaks. _“Sorry. I’m changing my life.”_

 _“And your question, doctor, um…what’s inspired me to get help?_ ”

_“I…overdosed about ten months ago. At home. A friend of mine, my—my significant other, actually, he found me. Um…sorry. I have trouble talking about this, still.”_

_Funny. I had trouble seeing it,_ Derek thinks bitterly, and immediately feels guilty.

 _“So,”_ Spencer continues, wiping his tears away and tapping his fingers against the desk again, _“I want to get better, so that he won’t have to go through that again, and we can…have a happy ending. Together. We’ve suffered so much.”_

Spencer looks up at his anonymous recorder and mouths something that Derek can’t quite make out, then nods, looks back into the camera, and thumps his fingers against the table. 

_“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay.”_

A single tear rolls down his cheek. _“Goodbye,”_ he whispers, drumming his fingertips one final time against the wood grain. _“Thank you for all of your love, and all of your support. Goodbye.”_

* * *

Derek sits, paralyzed and in silence, staring at his reflection as the screen goes dark.

 _What the fuck was that?_ He thinks after a moment of utter shock.

 _What the everloving_ **_fuck_ ** _was that?_

He’s tempted to cry out to Hotch, their resident lawyer and fellow Spencer Patrol Agent, to ask him just how many HIPPA laws are being violated in this two-minute clip, but he doesn’t want to sound any alarm bells just yet.

“Hey, Prentiss,” he calls instead, trying to dampen the terror in his voice. Emily is smart, secretive, and three feet away—just what Derek needs right now.

She looks up from her reports. “Hm?” 

“Can you c’mere a sec? I gotta ask you something.”

Emily rolls her eyes in mild annoyance at being interrupted, but nevertheless makes her way over from her desk and stands behind Derek’s chair. “What’s up?”

Derek drops his voice. “So, Reid is in rehab.”

She nods. “I figured. Is he okay? He didn’t say anything to me.”

Derek loves Emily Prentiss—she’s seen enough nutjobs in her day that low-level nutjobs like Derek and Spencer don’t seem to phase her in the slightest. 

“That’s what I wanted to ask you, actually. I don’t think so. He didn’t say anything to me, either. And I just got this fucking... _weird_ treatment report video. I got treatment reports before, you know, phone calls, letters, because I signed on as a family member, but never anything like _this._ This is fucking weird, Prentiss. It’s like a Goddamn snuff film.” 

Emily frowns. “Let me see?” 

Derek hands her the headphones, unable to bear another retelling of Spencer’s horrific 2006, and she leans over the screen as if to block it from passersby.

_Smart._

“Does something about that look weird to you?” Derek asks. “Something about this video is _seriously_ bugging me, but I’m not really sure what. I mean, again, the last place he was at never did anything like this. I don’t think this is legal. I never signed anything. Never heard anything. I don’t even know where he is.”

Emily shifts her weight and leans over Derek’s shoulder. “I dunno. It looks a little...dirty, doesn’t it?”

Guilt overcomes him for a third time that morning. 

“Yeah, he wanted to get in right away,” Derek explains, leaving out his own role in the matter. “It’s hard to find a nice place on short notice. Heroin is an epidemic right now, so if you don’t wanna wait, they just put you wherever they got room.”

“What’s he doing with his hands there?” Emily asks, pointing at Spencer’s restless, tapping fingers. 

Derek frowns. “What do you mean? He’s fidgeting. I dunno. It’s Reid.” 

“No. Look. I _swear_ I saw something. Rewind?” 

Derek frowns and rewinds the video thirty seconds, his heart pounding in his throat. “He’s…I dunno. He’s always doing that, Emily.”

Prentiss continues to stare. “No,” she breathes. “Ohh _no.”_

“What?” 

“Rewind.”

“Emily—” 

“Fucking _hell,_ Derek, will you just _do it?_ ” She snaps. 

Reluctantly, Derek rewinds again. (Emily can be scary when she’s angry.)

“Look,” Prentiss orders, pointing at the screen. “Okay. _That?_ Is a distress signal. Right there. See that? Dot-dot-dot…dash…dash…dash…dot-dot-dot. Universal distress. He’s—that’s for distress.” 

Derek’s blood runs cold. 

He tries not to hyperventilate. 

“No,” he insists. “Hey, that’s…a coincidence. It’s gotta be.” 

“No, it isn’t. Look. He does it again.” 

He does; he does it again, and _again,_ and once more before he bids Derek farewell.

Emily is right.

It’s clear as day: _SOS._

_Help._

_Help me._

Derek, numb from the chest outward and half an inch from doubling over and vomiting, imagines his sweet, innocent, defenseless baby (and maybe Spencer’s not _quite_ all that, but it’s hard not to think that way at a time like this), _terrified,_ in pain, and unsafe, silently pleading for help as he stares into the camera. 

He can just _imagine,_ all too fucking well, Spencer sitting there in that dirty, foreign room with a weapon pointed at him, maybe in danger, in _pain_ , calling out for help, desperately hoping that Derek would understand. 

_I failed you._

_I failed you, Spencer. I’m sorry._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!! 
> 
> Please leave a comment if you enjoyed!!!!! I really love hearing from you guys, it motivates me a lot :)
> 
> Next chapter, I’m going to clear some stuff up and go in depth on Spence, so please stay with me if you care to :)


	6. Desperate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: these chapters are going to be shorter from now on  
> The literal next chapter after I said that: [8.5k words]
> 
> Haha. I hope you will enjoy it! It's a holiday present. Merry Christmas to everyone celebrating right now, happy belated Hanukkah to all those who celebrated that, and a very pleasant December 24th to everyone just chilling at home right now. :)

**_des·per·ate_ **

**_/ˈdesp(ə)rət/_ **

**_adjective_ **

  * _feeling, showing, or involving a hopeless sense that a situation is so bad as to be impossible to deal with._



**_01/25/07_ **

_I’ve made a mistake._

_This is not a hospital._

_I am not going to heal here._

_I want to go home._

_Do not accept drinks from strangers._

_Poor stupid boy._

**_26th_ **

_My father was in an accident last year._

_The hospital called me. They weren’t sure if he was going to survive, and said he wanted to see me._

_I told them no thank you._

_I was cordial, like I always am._

_No thank you. You see, he left us when I was eight years old, and I grew up on welfare, rationing my mother’s antipsychotics, crying myself to sleep, stealing cough medicine to get us through the winter, doing my homework on the front porch by the flickering orange lights lining the street, because my mother would forget to pay the light bill…_

_“No, thank you. We don’t have a relationship, and I don’t want to make matters worse for him.” (That’s all I said.)_

_“What if you never get to see him again?” Derek asked me when I told him._

_“I made my peace with that a long time ago, and so did he.”_

_“That’s your papa, Spencer.”_

_And I said something like: so what if he is? He clearly doesn’t care about all that. Fuck him._

_Because that was the truth -_

_I didn’t care._

_I wasn’t just saying that - I really didn’t. My daddy was dying, and I didn’t care. It was haunting and cathartic all at the same time._

_Despite that, despite not wanting to, I found my way back to him._

_Across time and space, I found my way back to William fucking Reid._

_(Blood might be magnetic.)_

_A few months ago, I saw my father in Las Vegas. I got choked and nonverbal, which only happens when I’m so upset that I can’t see straight. Rossi talked for me._

_Suddenly, I cared a lot, and I realized that I’m just as much a coward as my daddy is._

_I did something cowardly and petty that I am not proud of, and I don’t want to talk about all of that, but I sent a man to prison for life for a public service murder, because I was so selfish that I refused to leave it alone. It was the lowest I’ve gone. Derek was so angry he wouldn’t look at me for days._

_“What the hell’s wrong with you?” He eventually asked me, rolling over in bed to face me for the first time in however long. “You’re not the only one who grew up without a dad. It’s not an excuse. You can’t just act like this.”_

_And then we just talked for a really long time._

_We talked about how our fathers were so different, and I wondered aloud if that’s why we’re so different. (We are different. We’re like opposite people who match up together like the rounded ends of puzzle pieces.)_

_Derek talked about being handed a neatly-folded flag at his father’s funeral, and how it meant everything and nothing at the same time._

_“I didn’t care about the flag,” he said to me as I closed my eyes and imagined little twelve-year-old Derek taking the flag, standing up straight, and soothing his women like he does Penelope and I - the same chivalrous hero I am convinced he has always been. “But I think I realized who I wanted to be, then.”_

_I talked about sitting on my front porch watching my father’s bumper stickers get smaller and smaller over the desert horizon until I couldn’t make out the car at all._

_He told me about the moment he realized he could still feel his father’s love, and I told him, crying because I’m stupid, about the moment I realized that William never loved me in the first place._

_He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling and told me with a shaky voice about how it felt to be molested, and I didn’t know what to do (I hate myself for that) so I just held his hand to my cheek and whispered that I loved him over and over and over into his palm. Kissed his face thirty-two times. I hate to see Derek hurt. Hate upon hate._

_He told me how it was to grow up with a father who died a hero, living perpetually in the shadow of a perfect martyr, and I told him how it was to grow up with a father so cowardly that he couldn’t face his spoils until he was on his deathbed._

_I talked about how I was always alone. Putting water into the milk to make it last longer. Stealing to pay the lights bill. Too little for a bank account. I told Derek we got welfare and disability and sometimes we couldn’t even use the money, because I couldn’t cash my mommy’s checks, of course, and neither could she. Buying groceries with quarters from slot machines._

_Derek told me I break his fucking heart. (He said that. “You break my fuckin’ heart.”)_

_“I know you’re used to doing things on your own,” he said._

_He squished my face into his shoulder and rubbed my back._

_Derek smells like leather and pine trees. It always calms me down._

_“But you don’t have to anymore, okay? You have me. I promise you, from now until the end of time, no matter what happens, baby, to the end of the world, you have me. You can always ask me for help.”_

_So when Dr. Hicks set me up in front of the camera and asked me what I wanted to say to Derek, I did as he said -_

_I asked him for help._

* * *

Spencer wakes up out of a drug-addled nightmare about _spiders_ of all things on Monday morning, shivering with cold and curling in on himself from a sharp pain in his abdomen. 

There’s a concrete ceiling above him and a slightly-damp quilt sitting heavily on the lower half of his body. 

His toes are numb. His breath makes clouds in the frigid, indoor air.

He’s not sure where he is.

For just a moment, he’s afraid that he’s in some sort of crackhouse, and that he’s sold his soul once again to heroin, but he’s bowled over by vague, hazy memories before he so much as opens his eyes. 

_I didn’t come here alone._

_I didn’t come here on purpose._

No; he had been _driven_ here, blindfolded the whole time, trying to count left and right turns in the hopes of making his way back home, but finding himself slipping further and further into a sleepy high _(not heroin, not Dilaudid - someone else drugged me)_ and unable to make head or tail of anything.

This is not a crackhouse; this is something worse.

Spencer, now wholly awake and panicking in full, scrambles upright in the bed, trying desperately to moisten his lips (he’s dehydrated - _that’s no good, that’s no good at all, that kills_ **_very_ ** _fast)_ as his heart hammers inside of his aching head.

 _I was at home on Saturday,_ he remembers. 

He squeezes his eyes shut. Sensory recall - like Emily does.

_I had an appointment with Dr. Hicks._

_I got on the train._

Spencer remembers the delicate, swirly patterns in the carpet in Dr. Hicks’ office, and how he likes to trace them with his eyes as he talks his way through sessions. 

The glittery gold cross Dr. Hicks wears around his neck, and how it always catches the dim light just right. 

_We were talking about rehab,_ Spencer remembers. 

The smell of burnt coffee.

_“Would you like some?”_

He had a headache. He was in withdrawal. Not _bad_ withdrawal, not like with the needle, but withdrawal all the same. He’d brought a travel mug to his appointment with him, but he’d already drained it, because he drinks coffee like water from the time he wakes up until he physically _can’t_ stop trembling. 

A styrofoam cup beneath the pads of his fingers, which he carefully avoids scraping against his teeth (lest he create a _bad sound)_ a slight burn on his tongue, the slight salty taste undercutting the sugar - 

Spencer freezes.

If he didn’t know any better, he’d think his heart had stopped. 

“Salty,” he whispers out loud, to no one in particular. “It was _salty._ ”

_Fuck._

_Rohypnol._

_Fuck, fuck, fuck._

_Stupid boy._

* * *

The room Spencer is sleeping in seems to have once belonged to a girl of about twelve years old named _Angelique._

It’s lit by one large fluorescent light and packed with a variety of pink, frilly adornments, all of which are damp (from which Spencer concludes that he must be underground), and appear to have _been_ damp for quite some time, as they have all sustained significant mildew and mold damage. Its destitute decorations include a pink jewelry box with _Angelique_ written on the lid and a broken mirror inside, peeling porcelain dolls, stuffed animals growing proper black mold, and a multitude of crosses and rosaries pinned up on the walls with rusted nails. The yellowing, once-pink paint, also suffering debilitating dampness, is peeling off of said walls, but the miserable mural of an angel painted on the cinderblock wall opposite the double bed seems to be fairing mostly fine. 

The floor is made of cold, damp, pink shag carpet, and Spencer (who is barefoot, and entirely naked but for a rosary and what seems to be some sort of old-fashioned hospital gown) full-body cringes when he sinks his toes into it and feels it _squelch._

He slowly makes his way over to the door to the room, trying not to retch at the way the carpet feels against his feet, and, against all hope, jiggles the doorknob.

_Cold to the touch._

Much to his surprise, the door opens with no resistance, and he steps out into what appears to be an entirely normal half-basement.

The rest of the basement is no warmer or cozier than Angelique’s room - in fact, it’s pure concrete on all four sides, with small, barred windows eight feet up the walls - but the floor is dry, and Spencer finds that this (combined with the lack of decaying children’s toys) is alluring enough that he steps out into the larger room.

His voice is hoarse from dehydration and lack of use, but he gives his best. “Hello?” 

No answer.

On the wall in front of Spencer, just below the dirty, prison-esque windows, there sits a large, dormant wood stove, and Spencer makes a mental note to look for fire supplies. 

He’s not sure how long he’ll be able to last if he’s to be kept at these temperatures, and _wet_ no less.

 _I’m going to die of gangrene,_ he thinks, _in the year of our Lord two-thousand and seven._

There’s a firm, wooden door to the left of Angelique’s bedroom which, curiously, appears to open outwards into the outside. Because Spencer is hungry and dehydrated and cold and desperate and lives with Derek, the first idea that crosses his mind is to _kick it._

He’s watched Derek do this enough times that he ought to have a handle on it, he reasons. It looks easy enough, and he _knows_ there’s a method to it, despite Derek’s insistence that it’s all raw strength - there’s a certain position one has to take, and a certain spot on the door one has to kick.

_It can’t be that hard._

He steadies himself (or _tries_ to - he’s plenty anemic even _without_ a weekend’s worth of hunger and thirst), fixes his eyes upon the spot below the lock (he’s _pretty_ sure that’s where he ought to be kicking), and thrusts his full body weight and all of his hopes and dreams against the cursed wooden door.

The door doesn’t budge, and he jams his ankle. 

_“Fuck,”_ he hisses, stumbling backwards and clutching his foot. “Oh, Jesus _Christ.”_

_If I see Derek again,_ he thinks, and then stops himself short, alarmed and unsettled at the ease with which he thinks about his life conditionally.

To Spencer’s right, there are two more doors.

One of them - the one on the far right wall - is made of rusted metal, and it’s deadbolted shut. (Spencer, now deeply humbled, makes no attempt at kicking this one.) Dr. Hicks had taken him through that door into a white-walled, white-tiled room, he remembers - this was where he’d recorded that _video._

_Right._

_S.O.S._

Just once more, for good measure, Spencer silently wills into the cold, unlistening universe that Derek would, in fact, see it, and that he’d understand.

The plywood door closer to Angelique’s room is ajar, and when Spencer opens it, he finds that it leads to a bathroom. 

The bathroom is not in good condition, but it’s not in _unusable_ condition - the bathtub is relatively clean (if a bit yellowed), the walls are painted a grimy, dull pink color (the same as Angelique’s room), and a dingy, faded portrait of Christ hangs above the toilet. (Spencer’s never understood religious people. The Morgans have a picture of the Holy Virgin Mary in their hall bathroom, and Spencer can’t think of anything less holy than making eye contact with the mother of Christ while peeing at his in-laws’ house.) There’s a puddle of watery vomit on the lid of the toilet, and Spencer realizes with a grimace that it must be his. 

Most notably, though, there’s a laminated piece of paper taped to the bathroom mirror.

 **_WELCOME, PAaTIENT!_ ** It reads in large, boldly typed letters.

However irrational, Spencer hates bold-faced print. He always feels like he’s being shouted at, and it makes him itch.

**_CONGRATULATIONSS ON TAKING THIS VITEL FIRST STEPS TOWARD YOUR RECOVERY!!!!!_ **

**_FACILITY RULES:_ **

  * **_YOU WILL MEET WITH YOUR DOCTOR EACH SUNDAY AND WENESDAY. AT THIS POINT YOUR MEALS WILL BE DELIVERED AND MUST BEE REFRIGERATED._**


  * YOU MAY EAT ANYTHING IN THE FRIDGE.


  * YOUR APPROVED CLOTHING IS HANGING IN THE BEDROOM CLOSET.


  * SUNDAYS AND WEDNESDAYS ARE YOUR TREATMENT DAYS. YOU WILL RECEIVE YOUR TREATMENTS ON SUNDAYS AND WEDNESDAYS. 



_(Redundant,_ Spencer realizes. _Multiple misspellings. He’s disorganized. Deteriorated.)_

  * **_WEAR YOUR ROSAREY AT ALL TIMES TO PROTECT AGAINST SATAN’S TEMPTATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_**


  * THE ROSARY IS STATISTICALLY LINKED TO LONG-TERM RECOVERY.



_(Well, that’s just not even true,_ Spencer thinks, scowling at his reflection. He looks awful - his hair is greasy, his eyes look bruised, and his cheeks are sunken in like those of a corpse - and he diverts his attention back to the sheet of instructions before he can think too hard about it.) 

  * **_TAKING OFF YOUR ROSARYE WILL LEAD TO FAILURE. IT WILL LEAD TO PUNISHMENTS. IT WILL LEAD TO RELAPSE._**


  * ROSARIES MUST BE WORN AT ALL TIMES.


  * PRAY ROSARY AT BREAKFAST AND BEFORE BED. THIS WILL PREVENT RELAPSE AND FIGHT TEMPTATION.


  * ON SUNDAYS, PROGRESS REPORTS WILL BE RECORDED, AND YOU MAY TAKE COMMUNION.


  * FACILITY IS MONITORED 24/7 FOR YOUR SAFETY!!!!!!!!


  * STAY OUT OF THE DARK!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT IS DANGEROUS IN THE DARK!!!!!


  * YOUR CROSS PROTECTS YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Some of these instructions are worthwhile, Spencer decides, and some of them are the crazed ramblings of a paranoid. Spencer is all too familiar with the slippery slope of paranoia, and Dr. Hicks, who clearly lacks the calming, authoritative presence of a twelve-year-old boy _(what is wrong with me? When did I become so bitter?),_ seems to have tumbled a bit too far. 

Hot, infuriating tears prick at the corners of his eyes, and he angrily swipes them away.

 _No crying today_ \- he’s already dehydrated. Today, he needs to think.

There are three things he’s going to need. 

  * _Protection from the elements._



If he can find some way to burn _something_ in the wood stove, he’ll be able to keep warm and dry, and he’ll be able to limit his odds of dying of hypothermia or exposure. He can take the mattress out of Angelique’s room and put it in front of the stove - he can sleep there instead. 

  * _Water._



_Easier._

_Thank God._

He turns on the faucet with a high-pitched creaking sound, and pale brown water pours out of its tap. 

Spencer’s heart sinks at the sight of the contaminated liquid.

 _I can’t drink this,_ he realizes, holding his numb, trembling fingers underneath the weak stream flowing from the rusted faucet. 

_The well must be contaminated._

_No crying today, no crying._

If he can burn something in the stove, and he can find _something_ to use as a pot, he can boil this contaminated tap water, and then it might be safe to drink. 

As of right now, he may be able to hold out until Wednesday to ask for matches, but he’s already dehydrated (he seems to have vomited nearly pure water, which is _never_ good for hydration) and if Dr. Hicks is gone a single day longer than Wednesday (which, Spencer notes, he may very well be - he’s clearly not in his right mind), his kidneys are going to start shutting down. 

_It would be certainly something,_ he thinks, _to die of dehydration after so much exciting, FBI-related turmoil._

He tries not to think about it. 

  * _Food._



Hicks had mentioned a refrigerator in his “instructions.”

It’s a leap of faith, really, to assume that _anything_ Hicks had said in the instructions was true, but there’s nothing else in Angelique’s basement that appears even remotely edible, so Spencer goes looking for it. 

He finds the small, rusted, white refrigerator in the back of Angelique’s closet, buried beneath an array of pink and white hospital gowns and nightgowns, and he nearly cries once again. 

He’s so _hungry._

_No crying today._

Much to his dismay, though, Spencer retches as he opens the door, overcome with the smell of sour milk and rotted vegetables. 

_Shit._

It’s spoiled.

_No crying today._

If he eats this, it’s going to make him sick. 

_No crying today._

He’d be worse off eating it than forgoing food until Wednesday. 

_No crying today._

As of right now, his best logical bet is to get in the bathtub - which is not damp like the bed or cold like the concrete - and conserve his energy as best he can.

He cries. 

He can’t stop himself.

There’s entirely too much stacked against him.

No one knows where he is, he’s entirely at the mercy of a disorganized man in psychosis, he’s still sick from the roofie, he has nothing to eat, nothing to drink, his fucking _ankle_ hurts, he didn’t get to say goodbye to Derek, he’s cold, he was supposed to go to the movies with JJ tonight, she’s not going to know what happened to him, _none_ of them are going to know what happened to him, they’re going to think he’s in rehab and no one is going to look for him for another three _months,_ he’s going to die here, die of dehydration, and none of them are ever going to know, they’re not going to find his body, they’re not going to start looking for him for another _three months,_ and by that time -

The buckle catches his eye while he’s hugging his knees to his chest and crying hard enough to give himself hiccups. 

_My bag._

In the delirium of the past two days, he hadn’t even _thought_ to look for his satchel. He’d assumed that any sensible kidnapper would have confiscated personal items, but clearly, Hicks is not quite sensible. From the looks of it, Spencer went in while drugged, for the journal _(I can burn that)_ and a plastic bottle of water (which he had foolishly downed immediately, _god dammit),_ but he’d left it lying open and otherwise untouched, just concealed by Angelique’s dresser.

Spencer uncurls from his ball of misery and snatches the bag off of the damp carpet. 

With hopeful, shaking hands, he reaches between the leather folds and blindly grabs at whatever he can manage to close his numb fingers around.

He finds his lighter, buried beneath a packet of Pop Tarts and a tampon (which he thinks he was holding for JJ several days back), and he locks eyes with the angel painted on the wall and silently thanks her.

Spencer digs deeper into the bag, and he feels something small, metallic, and heavy.

For the second time that morning _(afternoon?),_ he can swear his heart stops cold. 

_My phone._

_Holy_ **_shit._ **

Spencer’s hands are glitching, not quite working right at this absurd temperature, but he manages to turn the phone on and load up his contacts nonetheless. The battery is dangerously low, though, and he doesn’t have a signal strong enough to make a call.

For a few fleeting, _painfully_ hopeful moments, Spencer cradles his phone in his ice-cold hands, holding it above his head in the direction of the windows in a desperate attempt to find a better connection, but the battery drains in full before he has any success.

The screen goes dark, and Spencer could almost swear that he’s faded away with it.

* * *

**_Quantico, VA_ **

**_Monday_ **

Penelope can’t track the source of the video. 

She says that the listed location “changes every time I look,” and that whoever sent the video has a “sophisticated” understanding of encryption. 

“Didn’t you track his phone?” Derek demands, clenching and unclenching his fists in his lap in an attempt to soothe his nauseating panic. “You told me you were able to trace the call. What happened to that?”

“I _did,”_ she says, crying freely and openly. “I did, but all I got was a rough area, I-I couldn’t get the address, the call wasn’t long enough. Derek, I’m _sorry.”_

JJ, who is substantially more put-together, hugs her and politely asks Derek to fuck off. _(“I don’t think this is helpful right now.”)_

It’s deserved.

They all gather around in a huddle of subdued hysteria in Penelope’s office to speculate and make their useless guesses for an hour and some change until Hotch, who notices at some point that _all_ of his employees have vanished, comes in to chase them back to their desks.

When presented with the Spencer footage, he calls the police and _then_ sends them back to their desks.

“This is _not_ a BAU case,” he insists as he stands over Derek and Emily in the bullpen, playing his typical (currently fairly unconvincing, frankly) calm-and-stoic-leader card. “I’ve passed the footage and the location information along to the state police. There’s really nothing to suggest that our interference is necessary here.”

“Of course it’s a fucking BAU case,” Emily protests, managing to sound about as loud as anything despite hissing under her breath. “Jesus, what is _wrong_ with you? It became a BAU case when they fucked with _our agent_ . What happened to _looking out for your own?_ You know, when I started here, JJ told me this team was like a _family._ And you know what? I think that’s _bullshit,_ Hotch, because your _youngest agent_ is in some sicko’s - I don’t _know_ where, and you want us to just fucking -”

“ _Prentiss,_ ” Hotch snaps, cutting Emily off and leaving her, if anything, angrier than before. (Emily Prentiss is a powder keg, and Derek would bet his life that Hotch is going to be the thing to set her ablaze one day.) “Do _not_ ...speak to me that way. I put up with a lot from this team, _especially_ from you, but I will _not_ tolerate this level of disrespect. Do you hear me?” 

Emily calmly settles back down into her seat and glowers up at him. “Fine.”

“Reid is unharmed and had reasonable cause to choose institutionalization,” Hotch continues. “We have no reason to believe that anyone has done anything to him at this time. This is most likely medical neglect, which is not at all uncommon in rural rehabilitation facilities. That’s not—”

“What if something _did_ happen, Hotch?” Derek demands. “What if we sit on this, and something _worse_ happens?”

“If we have even the _slightest_ indication that this is going South, we’ll take a look at it,” Hotch promises. “Right now, we have no reason to believe this is anything beyond a bad facility, which is _not_ our division. I want you both to _calm down,_ and I want you back to working on the Michigan files, is that understood? I don’t want to hear another _word_ about this. I don’t want you using my time and resources to deal with something like this.” 

They mumble some vague, noncommittal agreement, and Hotch makes off back to his office with whatever ridiculous files JJ had prepared for him before the earth flew out from under their feet.

“What the _fuck_ is his problem?” Emily demands, opening her Michigan file with such ferocity that its contents spill over onto Derek’s desk. “What kind of fucking leader is he?”

He pushes her papers back towards her. “That was weird,” he agrees. “I mean, he and Reid are close. He wouldn’t just...there’s something he’s not telling us, Emily.” 

Emily looks down at her papers. “This _dipshit_ wants me to see if these autopsy reports from Detroit match _other_ autopsy reports from another case in California, thirty fucking years ago,” she says, ignoring Derek entirely. “ _Great._ If Reid is _dead_ by the end of today, at least we’ll have this done.”

Derek stares idly at the far wall and tries to blink back his tears. “Don’t say that,” he mutters, suddenly once again acutely aware of the empty space beside him. “I can’t think like that.”

* * *

The Michigan files lie neglected on Derek’s desk for the remainder of the day as Penelope, who has the luxury of a locking office door, runs Spencer’s “treatment report” video through various filters and texts their group chat with updates.

**_Penelope:_ ** _He whispers something at 2:58. “Was that okay?” or “Is that okay?”_

 **_Emily:_ ** _So it's scripted? Morgan - can I ask if the details were right_

 **_Derek:_ ** _they were, it’s not a standard script_

 **_Derek:_ ** _this guy might be a sadist. he could be getting off on watching him describe the overdose_

 **_JJ:_ ** _Do you think he made Spencer write the script, then?_

 **_Derek:_ ** _yeah or just had a weapon pointed at him._

The horrifying possibilities are endless, and the team spitball them back and forth for several hours to no real end. 

Derek’s subconscious conjures up the stuff of his worst nightmares every time he blinks - Spencer cut open from chin to pelvis, bleeding out and strangled by his own intestines, Spencer being violated with a sack over his head, Spencer gargling on his own blood, having his fingers cut off, his body burned, his teeth pulled out - _none_ of which is at all impossible as Derek just _sits here_ in the office, filing paperwork, watching slushy snow falling onto the parking lot and academy-aged trainees milling about and gossiping as if nothing were wrong. 

It’s cozy monotony undercut with vomit-inducing panic, and it’s the worst feeling Derek can remember ever experiencing. 

* * *

Everyone but Hotch walks past Derek’s desk that day, quietly asking him what _“the plan”_ is.

There’s something vaguely vindicating, darkly encouraging, and extremely scary about the fact that _every_ member of the team independently assumes, with no real confirmation or reasoning, that 

  1. there is going to be a forbidden, illegal, underground operation to use federal resources to find out what has happened to their beloved boy wonder, and 
  2. Derek will not only be leading this operation, but also already has a _plan_ by which to do so.



Derek has no plan, but he tells everyone to come to his house - the site of his last contact with Spencer - after they leave work. 

“We can look around,” he says, wiping his clammy hands on his slacks, “and we’ll figure it out from there.” 

(Derek borrows this from Hotch, who he imitates far more than he would care to admit. _“Great work today.” “Get behind me.” “We’ll look around, and we’ll take it from there.”)_

The others have suggestions for their shadow unit chief as the day draws to a close and they all become increasingly antsy.

Penelope, wringing her hands and crying the last of her mascara off, wants to know if she should start hacking into the databases of all of the medical facilities within Spencer’s cell-tower, triangle to see if he’d been taken in anywhere. ( _“Yes, actually. That would be great. Thank you, baby.”_ ) 

Emily wants to know if they should just go over Hotch’s head and have Penelope fraudulently assign the BAU to Spencer’s case. (Derek, who is desperate, briefly considers this, but ultimately declines.) 

Rossi (who seems to somehow know everything, regardless of whether he’s told or not) floats a fairly incomprehensible idea that sounds vaguely like a threat, and Derek declines this, too. 

JJ, who has to pick Henry up from daycare, feels needlessly guilty about not being able to come over, and offers to make calls to half a dozen police departments and four hospitals in Spencer’s approximate area before the morning. 

“Call me with all of your updates,” she orders, hurriedly buttoning her coat as they stand in a miserable huddle by the unit’s glass doors. “I want to make sure I know what’s going on. I’m serious. Make a list of things you need me to do and send it to me as soon as you can.”

Emily tries to convince JJ to “just get some rest tonight and call in the morning,” a suggestion to which she takes great offense, and Derek winds up asking her to please call the police departments, knowing fully well that she is going to do it with or without anyone else’s input.

“I was thinking, I could maybe just...stay...here?” Penelope suggests, right as they all prepare to leave the building. “I’m no good in the field. I can be with my equipment here. That way, if you - if you find anything, if you need anything…?”

She glances up at Derek with a twinge of insecurity about her, like she’s not sure she’s making the right decision.

He gives her a subtle nod. 

Truth be told, Derek doesn’t really have any idea what the best logistical move for Penelope is at this point, but _she_ seems to know, and he knows better than to doubt her expertise.

It’s a confusing thing, to be so revered by geniuses, when Derek himself feels so utterly ordinary. 

Penelope nods back at him. She straightens out, clutches her laptop tighter against her chest to hide the trembling in her fingers, and exhales. “I’ll stay here,” she repeats. “If you find anything that I could run through my systems, or if you need anything, I’ll be ready.”

It’s not a question this time, and Derek is proud of her. He’s proud of Penelope Garcia and the way she firmly plants her pom-pom-adorned kitten heels against the linoleum. He’s proud of the way she sticks her chin out boldly, even as it wobbles with the threat of tears. 

“Thank you,” Derek says, giving her his best encouraging smile. “That’d be great, baby girl.”

Emily nods and squeezes Penelope’s shoulder. “Thanks, Garcia. If Hotch asks what you’re doing, just tell him that JJ’s running something by you for...verification, okay?”

Penelope hesitates. “I _hate_ lying to people, Emily.”

“I hate being lied to,” Hotch says from behind them, appearing entirely out of nowhere, as if he were some sort of Disney villain.

Penelope gasps and covers her mouth.

Derek moves protectively in front of her, like his body will shield her from professional reproach. “Hotch,” he says, wracking his brain. “Look, man. We’re just gonna...get together. We’re not...”

“You’re just _getting together,”_ he deadpans, “and you’re not only going to have Garcia use federal equipment for unauthorized casework, but also have JJ use her position on this team to coerce multiple municipal police departments into doing favors for you.” 

Derek isn’t sure what to say to that, because Hotch has hit the nail on the head, but Emily provides. 

“What we do outside of this office is none of your business,” she insists. “You know, if we’re giving moral input on leisure time, how about you pay some of your _missing child support?_ That’s obnoxious, isn’t it?” 

_Too far,_ Derek thinks, cringing. He can tell by the way Penelope sucks her breath in that she’s thinking the same thing, and Derek says a prayer for all of them.

Hotch, alarmingly, just purses his lips together. “I’m headed out now,” he says, baited and careful, as if he’s holding something back. _(This is wrong,_ Derek thinks. _He never leaves this early.)_ “Let me walk you to your cars.”

He places a firm-but-gentle hand on Emily’s shoulder to guide her down the hallway, and Derek follows closely behind. 

Penelope ducks her head down and quietly excuses herself back to her office.

 _That’s my girl,_ Derek thinks as he steps out the glass doors.

* * *

The ugly, slushy mix of midday has turned to fat white snowflakes as the sun sets over the bleak horizon. It’s frigid enough that the wind blows right through Derek’s jacket, and he shoves his hands in his pockets and thinks absently about how easily Spencer gets cold.

“I’m being scrutinized,” Hotch says, flinching slightly against the bite of the wind. “After what happened with Garcia last year, I’m on my _final_ strike for unauthorized use of our resources. I need you to understand that. I _know_ you’re frustrated with me right now, and I’m _sorry,_ but I’m on thin enough ice with Section Chief Strauss as it is. If I’m jeopardizing cases the BAU has been asked to handle in favor of the unrelated personal matters of my own agents, I’m risking demotion and transfer, and potentially a deconstruction of our entire team.” 

“Alright,” Emily answers, turning away and unlocking her car door. 

Derek really envies her capacity to just be as rude as she likes at any point in time - _‘alright,’_ end of sentence, is exactly what he’s thinking. 

He can’t bring himself to care about Hotch’s career, or his own career, or anything other than the fact that his Spencer is missing, and he needs help. 

“But if you’re just _getting together,_ ” Hotch continues, “I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t come along.”

He looks Derek directly in the eyes, fear and pleading buried deep beneath his furrowed brow, and Derek understands.

“Sure,” he says, clapping Hotch on the shoulder. “Absolutely, man. Come with us. We’ll…have fun.”

* * *

They pull into Derek’s driveway in their separate vehicles, and it all reminds Derek far too much for comfort of the mournful gathering in his childhood home following his father’s funeral.

Everyone huddles around in the kitchen. 

Derek makes them the $15 coffee that he always buys for Spencer, who is a snob, and tries to pretend that they’re not all here to scour his home for profile-able artifacts of his missing fiance. It feels almost as if Spencer is dead already. It makes Derek’s stomach twist.

“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary down here?” Hotch asks. 

Derek shakes his head. “Nah. He left sugar on the counter. He doesn’t usually do that. But, not really.” 

“ _Sugar?”_ Rossi asks. “Cooking sugar?” 

“Yeah. For coffee.” 

Hotch scowls. “In what configuration? How much?”

“I don’t...a lot? Uh, it was like he spilled it.” 

“So could’ve been startled,” Rossi suggests. “In the middle of making coffee, and...what? How do I get a 6-foot-tall, hundred-fifty pound man to the other end of the state in the middle of the day, without attracting unwanted attention?”

“So you think this guy was _here?”_ Derek asks. 

_Here, in my house, abducting my fiancé in broad daylight, waltzing right in my front door?_

Rossi shakes his head. “I’m riffing. It’s possible. If I’m our unsub, how do I get Reid out the front door and into my car without being seen?”

“A weapon,” Derek suggests. “Something concealable. A knife? Switchblade?”

“If it was a retractable knife, don’t you think we might see more signs of struggle?” Emily asks, bending down to look underneath the island. “No kicking, nothing looks scuffed, no...blood stains.” 

_Of course not._

_I should’ve been here._

_I should never have left him._

_My poor baby._

Derek shakes his head, swallowing acid tickling the back of his tongue. “No. If he didn’t have a gun - and he doesn’t carry his gun around the house - he would try to talk it out.”

“Morgan’s right,” Hotch says, which, after five valuable wasted hours of insisting that Derek is overreacting, is somehow infuriating. “Reid’s a negotiator, not a fighter. We saw that with Hankel. He would know better than to try to attack someone who could overpower him, especially if they were armed and he wasn’t. This is going to be someone who could cleanly and easily overtake him.”

“I _love_ Spencer,” Emily says, “but how much does that really narrow it down? We train together sometimes, and _I_ can overpower him. _Easily.”_

They sit in miserable silence for a few moments before Emily speaks again.

“Okay,” she starts, “what if we’re thinking about this wrong?” 

“What do you mean?” Hotch asks.

“What if he wasn’t _startled?_ ” She stands up and moves over to the counter. “I mean, he left sugar here on the countertop, and he left the mug cabinet open,” she explains, “but no mug _anywhere._ Right?”

Derek, who is very particular about Spencer leaving disgusting dirty coffee mugs everywhere and would _certainly_ have noticed, nods. “Yeah.”

“Right,” Emily continues. “So, if I’m making coffee, I’m not gonna go opening the sugar jar until I have my coffee poured. I’d get a mug out, and I’d pour the coffee, and _then_ I’d start adding sugar. If I’m in the middle of making coffee, and I turn around and I have a fucking knife to my throat in my own home, and I’m just...escorted out the front door, I’m not gonna take my coffee with me. He would’ve left it here if he’d been forced out. I don’t think anyone was in the house.” 

Hotch nods. “Good catch.”

“So what are you saying?” Derek demands. “You think he’s…?” 

Derek isn’t sure exactly what he’s gearing up to ask, because none of it is easily spoken, or even easily thought of.

_You think he’s walked off the same short pier that his mother did?_

_You think he’s scared of things that aren’t there?_

_You think he’s finally lost it?_

Luckily, Emily seems to understand.

“No,” she assures him. “I think he needed to be somewhere, and he was running late. He wasn’t blitzed, not in the middle of the street in broad-fucking-daylight, so I think there’s a chance he was meeting the unsub.” 

Derek frowns. “So he knows this guy.”

As rare as stranger abductions are, Derek couldn’t help but hope, from some deep, shameful part of himself, that this had been one such case - he absolutely _hates_ the idea that someone with plans to hurt Spencer could’ve flown so easily under his radar. 

“The question is, though, _where_ would he be going in such a rush on a _Saturday?_ ” Emily asks. “It wasn’t for work, and it’s not like he would have any _appointments_ or anything like that over the weekend, right? And, I mean, being a little late to... _hang out_ has never bothered him. Derek, did you know anything about him having some kind of super strict plans?”

Derek shakes his head. “No. And I would have _known,_ Prentiss. We have a calendar on the fridge. We right down all of our plans. We’ve done it forever. He’s got a lot goin’ on up there, it helps him keep track when we write it all down.”

“Is there anywhere he would’ve gone that he wouldn’t have wanted you knowing about?” Hotch asks. 

Derek’s stomach turns over. 

_His supply was out,_ he realizes. “Fuck.”

“What is it?”

“He was taking my pain pills. I guess you heard. He...they ran out on Friday, I think. He might’ve…” Derek trails off. 

They’d _all_ suffered to at least some extent at the height of Spencer’s addiction, and he feels that this is news that ought to be delivered in the same manner as news of a death in a family. After all, they _are_ a family, of sorts, and it _is_ a tragedy, of sorts. No, these are not the right circumstances under which to tell everyone that Spencer may have gone back to the needle; Derek would much rather they be in funeral garb, or perhaps holding cartoonish black umbrellas.

Fortunately, Hotch understands, and he keeps his brow as low and his chin as high as he ever has. “You think he was seeing a dealer.”

Derek looks down at his feet and shrugs.

“Or...having, um…some kind of affair, maybe?” Emily suggests hesitantly, as if Derek is made of glass and the mere idea will shatter him.

It doesn’t - it might’ve, once, but at the moment, Derek is open to hearing anything that will take them to Spencer.

 _Is this what love is?_ He wonders, staring at the faint remains of a Spencer-originated ink stain on the tile between his boots. _Wanting him safe and here with me above all else, no matter what?_

Rossi, perpetually unaffected by almost everything, shakes his head. “He’s not having an affair. It wouldn’t make sense.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not consistent with the profile. He was an abused, neglected kid who grew up to be docile and submissive,” Rossi explains. “He feels directionless without a pseudo-authority figure, he...gravitates towards alpha personalities because he’s looking for a sense of control and _stability_ that he didn’t have growing up. Derek, you give him that. Reid is smart. He’s _rational._ He knows what he wants. He’s not gonna give that up for...sex with a stranger. Giving in to lust like that is illogical.” 

“So you think I’m _parenting_ him,” Derek deadpans. “That’s gross, Rossi. Thanks. Can we focus?” 

“No, not _parenting,”_ Rossi promises. “I just think he... _needs_ you. Relies on you. It’s not always a bad thing, and it usually goes _both_ ways. You depend on each _other._ Would you say you need him?”

Derek scowls. _Of course I do._ “What’s this got to do with anything, man?”

“Dave has a point,” Hotch says, standing up and pushing his chair in. “Reid admires you. You make him feel safe and secure. He wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize that sort of relationship unless he had to.” 

“ _Had_ to?” Emily asks. “What, you think this person was _blackmailing_ him?”

“There are a few possibilities,” Hotch clarifies. “It’s possible that his disappearance and secret-keeping were compelled by an outside source, like Prentiss suggested. If he was seeing someone, for whatever initial reason, who was blackmailing or extorting him - most likely for money, information, or sex - it’s likely that he’d feel ashamed and not want you -” he nods in Derek’s direction- “to know.” 

Derek’s heart sinks.

He doesn’t like the idea that Spencer would be _ashamed_ to tell him anything. 

“It’s also possible that it was a strong _internal_ compulsion,” Hotch continues. “That would be things like addiction, mental illness, or even an especially strong guilt or sense of obligation. 

Right now, it sounds like our best option is to look at drug dealers in the area, but I want to examine all avenues, even if they don’t make a lot of sense. We’re not leaving any stone unturned, do you understand me?” 

No one seems to take any issue with this - not a single one of them is willing to take the risk inherent in shortcuts. There’s far too much at stake.

* * *

The team talks for a few more discouraging, empty hours. 

They ponder about what the purpose of the deeply unsettling, anonymously-delivered video might be (they throw everything from sadism to misguided counter-forensics into the ring), trying to construct a comprehensive psychological profile based on five minutes of footage and some spilled sugar. 

They reverse-engineer victimology. Emily goes through Spencer’s closet and pulls out the candy wrappers and cans of non-perishables that he keeps in a plastic chest behind his jackets. Derek explains how Spencer had grown up in poverty, and that this was a compromise they’d made to get a “hoarding problem” under control, and he feels like he may as well just strip Spencer naked in front of the whole team and have them gawk at him.

Hotch gives them a list of things to run by Penelope “in the morning,” and Emily, who understands the absurdity of the idea that Penelope would be asleep, calls her immediately.

It’s just after midnight when Hotch announces that they seem to have hit a roadblock and decides that everyone ought to go home. 

“We’ll revisit all of this tomorrow and look at it with fresh eyes,” he says. “Good work tonight, everyone.”

Technically, they don’t have to listen to him, because this is not a BAU case, and there’s a brief moment that Derek considers telling him to go fuck himself. 

He doesn’t, because there’s been so much hysteria and upheaval today that he can’t bring himself to perpetuate any further confusion. 

“Are you going to be alright here?” Hotch asks Derek once everyone else has filed out, standing a healthy two feet away without an ounce of tenderness about him. 

Derek nods. He’s not sure if it’s _true,_ but he figures that Hotch will be able to tell either way. “Thanks for being here,” he says. “It means a lot, man. I’m serious. I know it’s a risk.”

“Of course.” Hotch swallows. “You know, this team is one of the most important things in my life. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this to you, but Reid was _seventeen_ when Jason Gideon and I first met him. I watched him come of age. I feel responsible for _all_ of you, you know but it’s...different with him. He’s like my own. I won’t let anything happen to him, Morgan. I promise you that.” 

There’s something about Hotch being grotesquely honest like this that just makes Derek want to hurry him out the door and kick it shut behind him. 

He’s just not _good_ at these sorts of things. God only knows Hotch isn’t, either. Men like them don’t have heart-to-hearts, least of all with _each other,_ and it’s always awkward and uncomfortable when they attempt at it.

At the same time, though, the kind-but-firm reassurance of the older man is comforting. They’re a united front on the issue of Spencer Reid - they always have been - and Derek can’t bring himself to respond to such vulnerability with hostility.

He claps Hotch on the shoulder. “Thanks, man,” he says, and means it.

* * *

The doorbell rings at 2:53 AM, yanking Derek out of a caffeine-fueled, dreamlike trance. He’s sitting at the kitchen table, numbly flipping through a sketchbook that Spencer had kept religiously in rehab last year in an attempt to pull forward any details that may suggest who he could have been meeting in secret.

So far, he’s come up agonizingly short, and has succeeded only in disturbing himself. (Spencer is a good artist - _much_ too good for Derek to take any kind of intellectual or creative pleasure in his horrifying depictions of his nightmares, which seem to be full of spiders with human arms, rats with human teeth, and babies with their hands cut off.) 

Derek is not in the mood for whatever nonsense might bring someone to his house at 3:00 in the morning, and he settles in to ignore his mystery guest, but shortly after, the doorbell rings six more times in rapid succession, and Derek realizes that it must be Penelope. 

_No one else._

Surely enough, Penelope Garcia is standing outside in the snow, vibrating like a madwoman beneath her bright yellow coat and clutching her computer bag like her life depends on it.

Derek sighs. “Hey. What are you doing here? It’s late, babygirl, you should try to -”

“Derek, I have _good news,_ ” she says, shoving past him into the house. “Oh, my _god._ I had to come over and show you.” 

“Okay. Well, come on in,” Derek calls after her.

He shuts the front door and follows her down the hall. 

Penelope is really not a guest in this house, Derek decides, as he watches her open her laptop on the kitchen table. He shouldn’t expect her to ask to be let in - she’s spent enough time here and done enough for Derek and Spencer that she very well ought to be allowed to come and go as she pleases.

“So, _this_ is where I picked up the signal last night, okay?” Penelope calls. “I showed you this morning. Bouncing between the Southern tip of the state and _this_ tower, here, a few miles West of the border.”

Derek leans over her shoulder. “Okay.”

“So, his phone was on for two minutes and...fifty-two seconds today. I’m not sure why. It wasn’t long enough for me to get a super close reading, but, _look.”_

Derek looks. 

Her map is speckled with various tiny red circles, all connected by hair-thin lines and piled into a crescent shape, and it means nothing to him. He’s so frustrated and so panicked after the day he’s had that he feels like he could just keel over and die of a heart attack, and Penelope’s little dots do nothing to soothe him. “Yeah,” he says. “That’s great. Those are some nice-lookin’ red dots.”

He regrets it as soon as the words leave his mouth. There’s nothing lower, he thinks, than being snarky and bitter with Penelope.

“ _No,”_ she snaps. “No, no, this is important, Derek, look. Hey - don’t be stupid right now, okay? I’m not in the mood, and I...and I’m _not_ in the mood, okay? I’ll cry.”

“Sorry.”

She gently pats the side of his head. “Consider it forgiven. _That’s_ the border, okay? The state border? And he’s on the Western side. I - I don’t have an _exact_ location, but he went missing from Virginia, and he’s in _West_ Virginia now. They took him across state lines. Um, this just occurred to me, or I would’ve mentioned it earlier. But, Derek - that means it’s a _federal case._ We can take it. Actually take it. Like, _for reals_ take it. Right?” 

Penelope looks up at him over her shoulder with that familiar insecurity. 

Derek cannot, for the life of him, figure out where that comes from. 

“Yeah,” he says, kissing her forehead as he chokes back flat-out _sobs_ of relief. “Yeah. It does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!!!
> 
> Please leave a comment if you liked this chapter so that I'll feel obligated to come back and add more :)
> 
> Happy holidays again!


	7. The Ducktail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With this chapter begins part two of the story. 
> 
> Investigation underway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys!! Sorry it's been so long (I say, as I do every time.) Thanks for still being here. 
> 
> Warnings for vomiting and mentions of (consensual) sex in this chapter!

_Derek wakes up in the middle of the street with his phone ringing._

_He’s got his face pressed into the dirty, half-melted snow, and his whole body is sore. The air is filled with an odd pink glow and a thick, disorienting fog._

_When he reaches out into the air, he finds his phone is in his hand, and he hoists himself onto his bare feet as he answers._

_“Hello?”_

_“Hey,” Spencer says, stepping out of the fog with his cellphone pressed against his cheek. His voice echoes eerily and unnaturally around the vast expanse of the dark, empty airport._

_Airport - they’re not outside. Of course they’re not. Why would Derek be lying in the road? They must be going somewhere._

_Yes, that’s right - they were stranded in Chicago, because of the snowstorm._

_“I’ve been calling you,” Spencer insists. “What happened? You haven’t answered your phone all morning,_ _lyubimiy_ _.”_

_Derek realizes, suddenly, that he’s naked from the waist up, and he feels uncharacteristically, uncomfortably vulnerable._

_“All morning?” He asks, stepping closer to Spencer. “What time is it?”_

_“Late afternoon.”_

_“But it’s dark.”_

_“It’s dark,” Spencer agrees. “It’s too dark! I’m scared!”_

_“Don’t be scared. I’m here. You don’t need to be scared when I’m with you.”_

_“Agent Hotchner doesn’t like when I’m off by myself,” Spencer insists._

_“You’re not by yourself. I’m here.”_

_“I’m as good as by myself. You don’t know how to keep me safe. I’m_ **_scared._ ** _”_

_“I’m sorry,” Derek answers, reaching out to touch Spencer’s face. “I’m...I’m sorry, Spencer. We’ll catch back up to the others. I just lost track of time. When does our flight leave?”_

_“You lose track of everything,” Spencer mumbles. “You lost track of my bag.”_

_“I’m sorry,” Derek says again, pulling Spencer into his bare chest. “I’ll find your bag.”_

_“Everyone wants to know where I am,” Spencer protests, standing two feet away, up to his ankles in snow. “Hotch is worried about me.”_

_The snow—the snow._

_“Why is he worried about you? He doesn’t trust me to take care of you? He sent you out with me, and he’s worried about you?”_

_Spencer wails. “Where_ **_are_ ** _we, Derek?”_

_He realizes with a miserable, nauseating feeling that he doesn’t know, and he stands by helplessly as Spencer’s fingers are overtaken by a sickening purple frostbite._

* * *

**Tuesday**

“Spencer Reid,” JJ starts. 

She’s poised in front of her presentation, addressing them as they sit in a circle in front of her, just as she always does. If not for the fact that her face is faintly splotchy and her eyes are bruised from lack of sleep, like she’d cried so much she injured herself, one could forget that the terrified, tearful young man on the screen before them is one of their own. 

“You all…know him.” Her voice is tense and mournful. “But, um, he’s a twenty-six-year-old white male, he went missing from the Arlington-Alexandria area about seventy-four hours ago.”

There’s nothing _“about”_ about the value _“seventy-four hours ago,”_ and everyone knows it - JJ has been lying awake watching the hours tick uselessly past, just the way Derek has.

He feels bad; there’s something abstract about JJ (perhaps her dry wit, or her quick, furious walk) that vaguely reminds him of Desiree, his beloved little sister whom he does not see nearly as often as he’d like, and he hates to see her suffer.

“Police currently have no promising leads,” JJ continues, “but they know of a few people who could have information, or might know someone who does. We have access to DC Metro security footage from this weekend, and, um, we’ll want to look through that, because his car was still parked in his driveway at the time of his disappearance. Our most recent contact with him was a phone call made to Morgan sixty-one hours ago. The unsub also sent Morgan a recording yesterday, but it wasn’t timestamped, so we…”

She trails off, because she doesn’t need to finish the thought. 

They can’t reasonably consider it a point of contact; it could have been recorded on Saturday, for all they know. If the motive for the abduction was sexual sadism, the odds that Spencer was already dead by the time Derek received the recording would be overwhelming.

The hot, sharp pangs of anxiety Derek had been experiencing yesterday have since melted into every nook and cranny of his chest and settled there. Every fiber of every one of his muscles is strained. He doesn’t seize up at the thought of watching Spencer’s last living moments, because he could not physically be more tense than he is, but bile slips up the back of his throat nonetheless. 

“He was openly gay and a recovering heroin addict,” JJ says, “and we don’t know that either of those—”

“Oh, can we not say _‘was’_ like that?” Penelope interrupts. “Please? I can’t do that, JJ. I can’t.” 

JJ falters. 

“Garcia’s right,” Hotch insists. “Until we have solid evidence to the contrary, we need to make sure we’re treating his case with the urgency and sensitivity of a living abduction victim. Treating it as a homicide without reason to believe it _is_ a homicide is counterproductive.”

Derek thinks with a twinge of annoyance that Hotch sounds like he’s just trying to give himself a false intellectual high ground over Penelope - he’s rationalizing something completely irrational. 

Talking about Spencer in the past tense is not _treating it as a homicide,_ it’s _semantics,_ and Hotch knows this as well as anyone. Under normal circumstances, he would never bother correcting JJ over _is_ vs. _was._

Hotch had told them before the briefing that JJ was _just barely_ able to allot this case to them, due to the “major conflict of interest.”

 _“I need you all on your best behavior,”_ he’d said. _“We need to treat this as we would any other case. This team needs to prove that we can be clear-headed and objective, or we’ll lose the case, and we lose control of this situation.”_

This always seems to be Hotch’s worst nightmare - _losing control_. 

Aaron Hotchner likes to have the world under his thumb, where he can move everything around and manipulate any given situation exactly as he pleases. Derek can’t help but wonder if this is the reason he’s always taken such a liking to Spencer.

Regardless, he’s violating the rules he himself had laid out for them, and it’s not a good omen for the remainder of the case; if Hotch can’t be disciplined, objective, and cold, who _can?_

JJ looks at Hotch for a moment, then swallows hard and nods. “Okay,” she agrees. “He _is_ openly gay and a recovering heroin addict. We don’t know that that had anything to do with his disappearance, but we can’t...we can’t rule anything out at this point. Police were able to locate a drug dealer who they think might’ve been involved with Reid at some point. Details are in your files.” 

“Thank you, JJ,” Hotch says as she takes her seat next to Emily. “Garcia, I’d like you to start by going through the metro footage. See if you can find anything.” 

Penelope nods, and Derek squeezes her shaking hand beneath the table. 

_It’s gonna be okay,_ he wills, to himself, Penelope, and the universe. 

“Morgan and Prentiss, go out to Brentwood and talk with this dealer, see what he can tell you about Reid’s habits and any other connections he might’ve had.”

Derek nods.

He likes being in the field, especially with Emily, and, although he’s not eager to meet Spencer’s heroin dealer, he’s glad that he’ll be doing hands-on work.

“JJ, I need you to make a statement to local news outlets.”

“Yes, sir.” 

“And I want you to be in touch with Diana Reid, if possible.”

Derek winces, and JJ, clearly thinking the same thing he is, freezes. 

Unlike JJ, Derek is not trained to interact with panicked, grieving families, but he’s not entirely sure that any amount of training could prepare someone to deal with Diana. 

“Is that going to be a problem?” Hotch asks. 

JJ quickly snaps her mouth shut and shakes her head. “No. No, not...not at all.” 

“Good. We need to find out if he’s made any contact with her. If he was able to make contact with Morgan, it would make sense that he’d be in touch with his mother. 

Dave and I will work with local police on canvassing. We’ll head over to set up at the station in twenty minutes. Let’s meet in the parking lot in fifteen.”

With that, they all stand and file out of the briefing room, one-by-one, like a funeral procession. Emily gives Derek a mournful look as she passes him, and he pretends he doesn’t see her. 

JJ lingers behind a moment, fiddling with the buttons on her display screen. Derek is going to follow Emily out the door, but he thinks better of it and stands silently by as JJ turns her monitor off. 

“What’s up?” She asks once she’s finished, snatching her case file off of the table and folding her arms over her chest.

“I wanted to thank you, JJ,” Derek says.

“For?”

“For getting us this case. Staying up and putting that work in. I know it wasn’t easy.”

“I didn’t have a choice.” 

“No,” Derek agrees. “But you could’ve fucked all of this up a million different ways. I would’ve. You’re a damn good liaison. We’re lucky to have you.” 

JJ smiles through tears and reaches up to squeeze his shoulder. “Thank you,” she says, her voice nearing a breaking point. “But, I know.” 

It’s the same sort of banter in which they’d engage on any normal day, and Derek chuckles and shakes his head, despite the fact that it’s not really funny. 

His young colleague gives him a smile, squeezes his shoulder once more, and turns on her heel to leave the room.

But Derek isn’t quite finished, and he calls out to her before he can stop himself. “Hey, JJ?”

She looks over her shoulder.

Derek, suddenly intensely regretting nearly every miserable thing that’s happened in the past two years, swallows a lump in his throat. _This is not the time for this conversation._ “I’m sorry for what I said at Hankel’s place,” he blurts out. “About the splitting up. I didn’t mean that. I was…?” 

He can’t put it into words. 

_I was what?_ He wonders.

_What is this feeling? Gutted? Ripped in half? Psychologically and spiritually carved to bits and thrown from a building?_

Luckily, JJ, who is as close to a sister as Spencer’s ever had, seems to understand what he means.

She gives him a genuine smile and lowers her file to her side. “I know that, too.” 

With that, she makes off, leaving Derek alone beside the roundtable.

As he turns to follow JJ, his eyes catch a filing box labeled **_S. REID: NM. - > CO. INTERSTATE RECORDS, _ **and he has to sit back down until his nausea subsides. 

* * *

After the first 72 hours of a missing persons investigation, the likelihood that the missing person in question will be found alive declines to just eleven percent.

Vital evidence that leads to finding a missing person alive is most often collected within the first 48 hours of a disappearance. 

Currently, it’s been 61 hours since their last contact with Spencer, and the investigation is _just beginning._

Spencer’s now been MIA more than twice as long as Tobias Hankel had him, Derek realizes, and they’ve yet to find anything of substance, all because _he_ hadn’t been perceptive enough to pick up on the fact that Spencer was in danger. Throughout the _entire_ first 48 hours following Spencer’s disappearance, Derek was sitting at home doing nothing at all, taking Spencer’s word for the fact that he was in rehab despite the glaringly obvious holes in his story.

As he pours slightly-burnt coffee into a disposable cup in the break room, standing silently shoulder-to-shoulder with Hotch, Derek reminds himself that if _(God forbid)_ they don’t bring Spencer back alive, it will be no one’s fault but his own.

_I failed you._

_I’m sorry._

Hotch aggressively jabs a plastic stopper into the hole atop his coffee lid, and Derek is reminded of the previous night, when they’d stood an arm’s length apart in his front hallway and exchanged strange, near-forbidden words.

“I didn’t know you met Reid when he was seventeen,” he says impulsively, certainly overstepping _something._ Sleeping for any less than two hours tends to have this effect on him—it’s as if his brain-to-mouth filter has been shut off. 

Hotch stills for a moment, but eventually nods. “Jason Gideon and I were making recruitments.”

Derek purses his lips. 

Spencer doesn’t talk about his childhood (with good reason), and there’s a large part of Derek that’s always desperately wondered what he was like back then. 

He’s known Spencer the entirety of his adult life, but knows next to nothing of his love prior to the moment he’d first laid eyes on him. He’s often told Derek that he changed him - made him a better person, a braver person, happier and less desolate and more laid-back - and Derek has always wondered whether this was true.

“What was he like, then?” He asks, just above a whisper. 

Hotch hesitates, like this blurry, hollow sliver of Spencer’s boyhood is deeply confidential information, then drops his evergreen scowl in favor of a mournful, blank stare out at the snow. 

“He was brilliant,” he says. “Brilliant and...sweet.”

It’s unsettling to hear Aaron Hotchner describe someone as _sweet—_ Derek _had_ asked, but he wishes Hotch hadn’t told him _that._ It gives him the same air of emasculated vulnerability as their conversation last night.

“Very precocious, very professional,” Hotch elaborates, “but he...was a child. I bought him breakfast, when we first met—I would’ve been thirty-four, or thirty-five—and he ordered pancakes with whipped cream and rainbow-colored sprinkles. I told him, anything you want, my treat, and that was his choice. The way he talked, and that look in his eyes...I forgot how young he was. I think about those pancakes all the time.” 

Derek stares out at the slushy parking lot and tries to imagine his partner at the tender, “sweet” age of seventeen, sitting opposite a thirty-five-year-old Aaron Hotchner in a diner booth with a curious, bright-eyed, unconsciously-deceptive look painting his childlike features. Fidgeting, no doubt, likely sat with his legs criss-crossed on the cracking pleather seat, leaning forward in Hotch’s direction.

Spencer has a particular way of holding himself when he’s deeply engrossed in a lecture or an explanation of some sort; he sits hovering on the edge of his seat, with his delicate brow furrowed and head cocked ever-so-slightly to the side, bearing resemblance to an inquisitive puppy. 

There’s something about that look that makes Derek sad—he almost worries that Spencer, delicate and otherworldly and seemingly very far from Earth, may just rise off into the atmosphere somehow, like Christ from his deathbed, and leave Derek where he stands.

Derek wonders if he’d slicked his hair down back then, the way he briefly had upon joining the BAU. 

Spencer’s hair was always too curly and unruly to subdue with gel and his $20 flat-iron. No matter how many agonizing hours he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, tugging on it and slicking it down, trying _desperately_ to get it to look like Hotch’s, it never did - there always remained a defiant swoop just beneath his right ear. It drove him crazy. 

Derek loved it, though, because it always reminded him of the soft, sloping tail of a duckling. It was like an especially persistent April violet after a dark winter, rearing its head through cold, cracking concrete; it was a sliver of youth and tenderness, upon which Derek could lovingly gaze and remember that not all was wrong with the world. 

At work, when they were out of the lines of vision of everyone of consequence, he would reach over Spencer’s shoulder and gently tug on it—a silent declaration of love for everything that made up Spencer Reid. 

Later, at home, when he’d lay Spencer out on his back and mercilessly fuck into him (as if it was the only thing in the world that mattered, the _only_ thing for which he lived and breathed and fought and killed), he’d tug on Spencer’s little ducktail yet again, just as he had at the office. Spencer, always gripping Derek’s shoulder blades in a futile attempt to steady himself, would just smile against his mouth.

_Message received._

“To tell you the truth,” Hotch continues, “I’m not confident we made the right choice in bringing him on.”

“Reid’s a good agent,” Derek protests, feeling the familiar knee-jerk urge to defend Spencer’s honor despite his being possibly-dead and certainly-out-of-earshot. “He’s saved a lot of lives. He had his struggles, but he was clean—”

“I’m not disputing that he has a place on this team, Morgan. That’s not it. I’m saying it could have waited. He wasn’t ready. I’m not sure that he wanted to be a profiler at all, truthfully.”

“Oh, come on, man. You can’t do that to yourself. He wouldn’t do all that training if he didn’t want in. What _else_ would he be looking for?”

“A father.” 

The words hit like a metal rod to the gut.

Derek opens his mouth to say something— _anything,_ God knows he doesn’t have a plan—but Hotch glares right through him, grabs his cup off of the counter, and storms off in the direction of the glass doors, ending the conversation before it really begins.

If Derek didn’t know the man any better, he might say that he looked tearful. 

* * *

Christian Romano is a scrawny, unwashed Italian-American man in his early thirties. 

He’s been to prison on distribution charges no less than five times, and, if Penelope’s sources are correct (Penelope’s sources are always correct), he’s currently violating his parole in favor of selling black tar heroin and—somewhat alarmingly— _magic mushrooms_ out of his home in Northeast DC. 

As they near Romano’s neighborhood, Derek finds himself growing increasingly unsettled with the idea of meeting the man who had sold Spencer heroin. This stranger had played a significant part in ruining their lives, after all, and Derek, being the professional that he is, will have to stand in front of him and cordially ask the same routine questions, as if he were any other person of interest. 

_What’s worst,_ Derek decides, running a stop sign at an empty intersection, _is that he was only ever doing what Spencer wanted._

 _“His Twitter bio says he’s a fun-loving guy who loves sexy ladies and loves to chill and share a blunt,”_ Penelope says on the other end of Emily’s line as they drive across the city to question Romano. _“All one sentence. I actually have a lot more in common with this black-tar heroin guy than I would have guessed.”_

“Wait a minute,” Emily says, frowning. “So, he talks about smoking marijuana, on social media, _while_ _on parole?”_

_“Uh-huh.”_

Emily makes eye contact with Derek in the rearview. “I don’t know if this is our guy, Morgan,” she says, so softly that Derek almost feels sorry for himself.

Derek _desperately_ doesn’t want to hear that—he thinks that if he’s dealt another disappointment, he might just collapse—so he averts his eyes and says nothing. 

“He sounds like a moron, I mean,” Emily explains. “This abduction was pretty sophisticated.” 

“I got that, Prentiss. Thanks.”

He doesn’t like the bitterness that creeps into his tone, but it does the trick—she doesn’t speak to him for the rest of the drive to Romano’s, and it gives him yet more time to wallow in the thought of Spencer’s little ducktail. 

* * *

Romano, like most drug dealers in violation of his parole, has no desire to speak with the FBI.

He opens the door, gets one look at Derek’s badge, and moves to slam it shut again with an unparalleled swiftness that Derek almost has to respect. _(Almost.)_

Derek, who is so sleep-deprived and so desperate for any trace of his baby that he can’t bring himself to think about protocol, shoves his foot in the door.

Emily raises an eyebrow at him. 

He knows what she’s thinking, because he almost always knows what Emily is thinking.

 _Hotch told us we have to be on our best behavior, remember?_

_Fuck Hotch,_ Derek thinks.

  
He’s confident that Emily understands, and suspects that she sympathizes.

“What the fuck, man?” Romano demands, ripping the door back open and stepping confrontationally into Derek’s personal space. “You got a warrant?”

Romano is built like Spencer, who Derek just so happens to be able to legitimately throw several feet through the air. He briefly entertains the idea of picking Romano up and throwing him on the ground, but thinks better of it.

Derek simply opens his mouth to speak.

Emily, sensing his built-up tension, gives him a cold, hard look, and he bites his tongue and allows her to lead. 

“Mr. Romano,” she starts, “We’re with the FBI. We’re looking for a missing person, and we think that he might be in danger.” 

“I don’t know no _missing person,”_ Romano says, and moves to close the door again, like this ought to be good enough for them.

“We know you’re violating your parole, Romano,” Derek snaps. 

Their scrappy person of interest freezes in the doorway. 

_Got him._

Derek gently shoves the door, and Romano steps back and passively allows it to swing open. “You talk to me and my partner here—just answer some questions—and I won’t make it a problem.”

Romano, sensing that he’s stuck between a rock and a hard place, narrows his eyes and stares each of them down for a moment before beckoning them inside. 

* * *

The interior walls of Romano’s house are completely bare save for a faded painting of a waterfall, which, if Derek had to guess, was purchased from a Goodwill, seeing how the _$2.50_ sticker has not been removed. 

The living room is entirely devoid of furniture.

If not for the layer of dirt ground into the wall-to-wall carpet and the mass of dirty dishes in the sink, Derek would probably accuse Romano of using the house as a prop. 

Romano leads them into the kitchen and throws himself down on a threadbare couch in front of a glass-topped outdoor table. Derek and Emily hesitantly sit in two of the three fold-out chairs on the other side of the table as Romano shamelessly lights a cigarette right in front of them. 

Spencer’s been smoking since he detoxed last year, a pack a day during turbulent times, but Derek can’t remember him _ever_ lighting up at the dining room table, because Spencer isn’t an insufferable asshole. 

Derek imagines Spencer, with those restless limbs and chattering teeth, sitting at this glass-topped table, his face sheened with sweat (as it always was when he tried to wean himself) as he waited for a tiny bag of tar.

He feels like he could vomit.

Emily, who doesn’t seem to like it much more than Derek does, pulls out a file and lays two pictures of Spencer on the table in front of Romano.

He glances disinterestedly at the photos. “I ain’t seen that guy in a year,” he insists. 

(Derek notes that he’s got the _exact_ Long Island Italian accent that Emily always adopts when she’s mocking Rossi behind his back.)

“You sure?” Derek demands. He’s not really _asking—_ it’s more like a chance for Romano to reconsider the consequences of his answer.

He does not. 

“Course I’m sure. Dude was fuckin’ weird. I’d remember seein’ ‘im around.” Romano thinks for a moment, then flicks his cigarette into his ashtray and carries on speaking. “Weird, but pretty.”

Derek clenches his jaw. 

“Now, I’m not gay, right,” Romano continues. “I don’t do none of that homsexual shit. I’m a Catholic. You know, but a lot of these dudes, they been to prison, and you know how that shit goes. Don’t make a difference no more once they get out. A hole’s a hole.”

Emily glances at Derek, her lips tightened with anxiety, like she’s afraid he’s going to fly off the handle. 

It’s not at all an unreasonable assumption—Derek’s not sure that flying off the handle would be uncalled for in this situation, or even that it’s off the table. 

He feels _horribly_ for ever letting Spencer anywhere near this awful man, and, although he had told himself before that there was nothing more he could have done to keep Spencer off of the needle, he suddenly feels that there had to gave been _something._

Romano leans back on the couch, exposing his entire midsection for any wrathful blows that Derek may or may not rain upon him.

“So I told ‘im, you know, the fuck are you here for, payin’ me so much, man? Just deal out some ass for the goods, you know? And I’m a pretty bad businessman for all that, yanno. But I liked ‘im. Guy was smart, knew a whole buncha shit about those fuckin’ desert cults. I’m pretty weird, and I like freaky shit like that. Anyway, I thought I’d help ‘im out. But he never wanted no deal like that. Said he’s married. Poor lady.” 

Emily sighs. “Okay. Could I ask you just a few more questions, if you don’t mind?” 

“Sure. Go ‘head.”

“The last time you saw him—you said it was a year ago?”

“Yup. Just about.”

“Did he say anything about buying from anyone else, by any chance? Or any other kind of source?”

It’s a long shot, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that this man—who, Derek now agrees, is most _certainly_ a moron—had nothing to do with Spencer’s disappearance, and the only way this won’t be a _complete_ waste of time is if they get another name out of him.

Romano shakes his head. “Nah. He was gettin’ clean last time I talked to ‘im. Said he was gettin’ that 13-step counseling, or some shit. Whatever, you know. Lose a customer. It sucks. Usually come back, but he didn’t. But, I was happy for ‘im. Good guy.”

Derek’s stomach twists.

There it is—they’ve wasted an entire hour. 

They’re an hour closer to the dreaded 72-hour mark and not _one_ half-step closer to an answer.

_Fuck._

Emily looks at Derek just as his soul crumbles, and they stand, wish Romano well, and depart through his dirty, empty living room.

“I could kill him,” Derek mutters as they walk back to the car. “Whole lot of fucking nerve, talking about Spencer like that.” 

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Emily assures him. “But Hotch might.”

 _Fuck Hotch,_ Derek thinks, for the second time in an hour.

* * *

The rest of the day slips away with nothing of any substance uncovered. 

That evening, they gather in a miserable little circle in the briefing room, the only still-lit room in the now-dark FBI building, to review the facts of the case. The tape, the sugar, Romano, all of it together forming an awful cesspool of _nothing._ The cold, cruel wind beats against the window so hard that Derek fears it might break.

According to Rossi, no one living on Derek’s street was able to determine whether they noticed anything strange happening at the threshold of the Reid-Morgan house. 

Thus, the team rules out a blitz attack, and, after a whole _day,_ they find themselves with the same near-blank drawing board at which they had been staring the previous night.

Penelope tells them all that she had been unable to find any trace of Spencer on metro security footage. 

Derek, exhausted, panicked, and at his wits end, nearly passes out when she tells him. 

“Where did he _go,_ then? How the _fuck_ could he just _vanish?”_ He demands, impulsively slamming the flat of his fist against the table, and regretting it immediately. “People don’t just _disappear,_ Garcia.”

“There are just not very many cameras in the DC metro,” Penelope says. She’s shaky and ashen and tearful, and _God,_ Derek wants to feel sorry for her, but he can’t; he wishes that, for once in her life, she would just _hold it together._ “It’s not like New York. I don’t know whether he was there, I’m not saying he _wasn’t,_ I’m just saying we can’t...I...I don’t know _why,_ Derek. I’m sorry. I - God, _what_ is the _use_ of having _any_ of these if they don’t have enough to keep people _safe?”_

Briefly, _horribly,_ Derek recalls his dream of the empty, snowy airport, in which Spencer had stood in front of him and said that being with him was _as good as being alone._

_You were right._

_I failed you._

_I’m sorry._

He’s dazed for just a moment—his head swims, and his tongue feels swollen—and then, before he’s sure what’s happening he doubles over and vomits in a wastebasket at Rossi’s feet. 

There’s an immediate uproar of concern and alarm, but Derek doesn’t hear any of it, not _really,_ because he keeps his head low and thinks about Spencer’s little ducktail hard enough that he makes himself sick again.

He hasn’t eaten all day, and he chokes up nothing but coffee and hot, painful acid. 

He might be crying. 

He isn’t quite sure.

Penelope is suddenly behind him, rubbing his back and offering him DoubleMint, in tears just at the state of him. 

Hotch sends her to the break room to go find AlkaSeltzer tablets, which Derek suspects is just a way of diffusing the absolute insanity threatening to boil the room right over. 

He feels awful for it, but he’s grateful—Penelope is entirely too much for him right now. 

“You alright, son?” Rossi asks, leaning away in a mildly-detached manner, to which Derek just shakes his head. 

Twenty-two minutes later, just as they’re discussing Romano and Derek is about to come completely unraveled once and for all, the Arlington police department calls to inform him that they’re sealing off his house until they’re able to conclusively determine whether or not Spencer was abducted from home, so he’s going to need alternative arrangements.

He very nearly cries, but the girls fall all over themselves offering up their couches and spare bathrooms before he even has a chance to get choked up.

 _Family is good sometimes,_ he thinks, downing the last of the Alka Seltzer Penelope had mixed him and hoping that he’ll swallow his tears with it.

JJ tells him that she has an extra bedroom, but Derek doesn’t want to impose on her home as she and Will parent a newborn.

Penelope, of course, is aggressive in her hospitality, and she’s visibly hurt when Derek turns her down in favor of Emily. 

All he wants tonight is hard liquor and to be left alone to cry, and neither of these things exist in Penelope’s home.

* * *

Derek spends a lot of time with Emily Prentiss, but it’s fairly rare that they hang out like normal people one-on-one. 

He and Spencer have her over nearly every weekend. When they _don’t_ have her over, she has them over, instead. They carpool to and from work. Derek has no less than four “Emily” playlists reserved specifically for setting moods at their various dinner parties. Spencer had once made a drunken promise to her that she could officiate their eventual wedding, and she seems to have no intention of letting this go. They’re essentially a sub-unit of the unit. It’s not the _only_ foundation of their friendship, but they’ve all agreed that it’s liberating and deeply enjoyable to spend time in the company of other gay people - they understand each other to a degree that the others don’t always seem to. 

Nevertheless, Derek spends far more time with Spencer _and_ Emily than he does with Emily alone, and when he _is_ alone with Emily, they’re usually at work. 

So, while it is certainly _not_ nice to have been kicked out of his home by police searching for his missing fiance, it _is_ nice to get to spend time with Emily.

“I love Garcia,” Derek says as Emily approaches him from her kitchen, carrying two glasses of scotch in one hand, like some sort of sorcerer, because he can tell she’s about to lecture him about the way he’s been treating Penelope. “You know I do. But…?”

Emily hands him a glass and takes a seat across from him. “Right. No. I get it. She’s…she’s a lot, sometimes, huh?”

 _A lot_ is precisely the phrase Derek had been looking for. “Yeah. Exactly.” 

“But, you know, she just wants you to be happy,” Emily says, like Derek doesn’t know that.

“‘Course.” 

“I think she just...struggles with the fact that sometimes people _can’t_ be happy. And that...I dunno. It’s good to feel other things.”

They sit in silence for a moment, and Derek knocks back his glass in one go. 

He’s sure that it’s a very expensive alcohol—Emily is _refined,_ far more so than Derek, a lifelong member of the middle class, or Spencer, who lived in abject poverty until the age of twenty—but he can’t bring himself to care. It fills him with warmth as it burns the length of his esophagus, and the world is just _cold_ enough that it’s all he needs. 

“I miss him,” he says. 

Emily looks at him. 

“You don’t think about that, you know, when someone disappears, and of course I’m worried as all fuck, but I just _miss_ him, on top of that, Emily. It’s selfish. Just - this is the longest I’ve been without talking to him in ages.” 

She swallows and stares forlornly at her empty fireplace. “I understand. It’s been…”

“Four days,” Derek finishes. “Four _days,_ and no leads. We passed right fucking through that seventy-two hour mark. I talked to him on the phone for the last time seventy-four hours ago.” 

“Don’t say that, Derek. Don’t - it wasn’t the last time. He’s gonna be okay.” 

Derek, who had been telling himself that all weekend and is rapidly losing confidence, just shakes his head and stares into his empty glass. 

“You know what’s bothering me about this?” Emily asks.

“What?”

“I mean, besides the...obvious?”

“Right.” 

“Why would he lie to his drug dealer about being in 13-step counseling?” 

Derek shrugs. “He told him he was married to a _woman._ That sound like him?” 

“Of course not. That’s not...that made _sense._ I mean, he had a perfectly good reason to say _that,_ Derek. I just don’t understand why he would make up such a specific scenario and then lie to a _dealer_ about it. Doesn’t it seem like it should be the opposite? You know, you lie about... _not_ recovering, so they won’t try to keep you coming back? I dunno.”

Emily carries on talking about how _strange_ it all was, but Derek finds himself staring at her centerpiece vase and reflecting on the past several months. 

The odd, hour-and-a-half long solo trips out, a few weeks ago when he had claimed to be visiting JJ but was unsure what Derek meant when he asked about _the baby,_ the franticness with which he’d rush out the door, as if he were late for something, or thought he might be—

_Shit._

“Hey, Emily,” he interrupts. “What if it wasn’t a lie?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU for reading, and thank you for your patience!!! 
> 
> As always, PLEASE leave a comment if you enjoyed!! It really does mean a lot to me :)

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE let me know what you think of this chapter!!! I want to make sure I tell the story in a way that's interesting and engaging :)
> 
> It makes me feel super happy and very motivated when people comment on/kudo my stuff, so if you liked this and you'd like to see more, you know what to do ;) 
> 
> See you soon! Luv u x


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